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  “Then I am taking you shopping after this appointment,” Rami said firmly, with an air of absolute confidence. “We’ll get lunch and I will make sure you’re properly attired for a trip to New York.”

  “Rami—you’re already paying me so much…” Mia felt her cheeks burning as she looked around the room to make sure that no one was listening in. “I don’t want to take more of your money.” Rami shook his head.

  “I insist. It’ll barely cost me anything at all, and I want to see you in nicer things.” Rami smiled. “Not that you don’t make these clothes look like they should be on the runway.”

  “Oh hush,” Mia said, rolling her eyes.

  “Ms. Campbell? Mr. al-Hassan? The doctor will see you now.” Mia stifled a giggle as she stood up. Rami gestured for her to precede him through the door into the office proper, and Mia took a deep breath. Even if she was hesitant to accept Rami’s offer to take her shopping, the conversation had helped distract her from her nervousness. They followed the MA back to Doctor Farber’s private office, and Mia reminded herself that they still had plenty of options.

  Dr. Farber was a tall, slim woman with graying blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and a slightly hoarse voice from smoking through the first decade of her medical career. She rose as Mia and Rami came in, and Mia admired—not for the first time—the way her white coat looked over her simple but elegant crew-neck tee shirt and tailored slacks. “Good morning,” the doctor said, smiling at them both. “Can you close the door behind them please, Alicia?”

  “What’s the news, Doctor?” Rami asked as he sat down.

  “Well, as I’m sure you’ve both realized, our first attempts haven’t taken,” Dr. Farber said. “This does happen sometimes, and there’s no one to really blame for it.” Dr. Farber looked at Mia as if she had divined some of the guilty anxiety Mia was feeling. Mia thought that the older woman had probably worked with enough women to predict their reactions before they had them.

  “Do you have any idea why it’s not working?” Mia asked, trying to keep her voice level.

  “Sometimes it doesn’t work and we don’t know why,” Dr. Farber said. “But your initial fertility tests show you’re both plenty fertile.” Mia suppressed the urge to worry at her bottom lip. “I want to keep things as slow as possible—it’s better that way for both of you, and healthier. But the next step is IVF.”

  Mia took a deep breath; when she and Rami had had their first consultation with Dr. Farber, after they’d each done their separate blood tests and other exams, the OB/GYN had said that she wanted to take it as slowly as possible with them; both Mia and Rami were young enough that more aggressive methods of conception were probably unnecessary. Mia’s monthly cycle was fortunately as regular as a train schedule, so for the first month she had just charted her cycle, taking her temperature several times a day, every day, to pinpoint the moment she would ovulate. When the moment came, she had hurried to the doctor’s office, calling ahead to inform the staff that she was ready for her first attempt. Once she was ready, they had put a catheter inside of her and flushed her full of Rami’s semen. It was one of the most awkward, uncomfortable, and strangest experiences of Mia’s life, but she had lived through it; at least it hadn’t exactly hurt.

  When the first attempt didn’t take, the doctor suggested that Mia could take some of the milder fertility drugs to increase the number of eggs she was producing. She had done as she was advised, and for two more cycles had gone to the doctor when she was ovulating and experienced the discomfort of having Rami’s sperm flushed into her. Now that neither of the “enhanced” attempts at artificial insemination had taken, Mia had begun to wonder if there was something that the tests had simply failed to take into account. Not for the first time in her life, she wished that she knew something about her birth parents; some fraction of their medical history, something that might explain why it was apparently so difficult for her to conceive.

  “Now,” Dr. Farber said, jolting Mia out of her thoughts. “IVF is a lot more intensive than regular artificial insemination. I’m going to need you to follow the directions to the letter, Mia, and it would be best if you can make sure you get as much rest as possible.”

  “She’s on sabbatical from work,” Rami said. “But her mother is ill, and Mia takes care of her.” Dr. Farber nodded.

  “I understand you feel obligated, but if you can afford it, try and see if you can find someone else to help her out for a couple of months,” Dr. Farber suggested. “You need to have as little stress as possible in your life.” Mia shrugged.

  “It’s not—it’s really not that big of a deal,” Mia said. “It’s not a major stress…and I think I’d be more stressed if I didn’t take care of her myself.” Dr. Farber hesitated, before nodding.

  “If you think it’ll be easier for you this way, that’s understandable” she agreed. “In the mean time, I want you to make sure you’re eating well, and staying as healthy as possible. IVF can put a lot of stress on the body.” Mia pressed her lips together and glanced at Rami, he was nodding along with the doctor’s recommendations.

  “Okay,” Mia said, steadying herself. “Let’s go over what that is going to entail.” She took a notebook out of her purse and listened as the OB/GYN began to explain the process, and what Mia would have to do. There would be more intensive tests, more medications to take—medications Mia would have to inject. The idea was less than thrilling, but looking at Rami, remembering how much he was paying her, and how much he wanted this child, Mia pushed aside her misgivings. She had already managed to pay off her mother’s medical bills and her student loan debts in the space of three months.

  In another few, she would hopefully be pregnant and able to pay for her mother’s treatments—maybe even put a down payment on a house. For that opportunity, she could handle daily shots, the blood tests and the ultrasounds. Imagine if you were diabetic, she thought to herself, writing down the instructions Dr. Farber was giving her. You’d have to inject yourself and stick yourself with needles every day and no one would be paying you for it—they certainly wouldn’t be paying you a hundred thousand dollars a month.

  As they left Dr. Farber’s office after setting Mia’s next few appointments—appointments she would mostly be attending alone—Rami turned to her. “You didn’t think that I was going to just forget about taking you shopping, did you?” Mia blushed.

  “How did you even remember that after that huge information overload?”

  “I’d already researched the process and kind of knew most of what she was going to say before she said it,” Rami admitted.

  “We really don’t have to do this,” Mia said, brushing her hands against her skirt self-consciously.

  “Oh but we do,” Rami said, grinning. “Especially since we just got bad news. A good shopping trip will take us out of the blues.”

  “Are you even serious right now? Am I the type of woman you think can just spend money and feel better?” Rami looked at her in disbelief.

  “Every type of woman is that woman,” he said, shaking his head. “And secretly every type of man is that man, too. Men just usually spend their money on different things.”

  “Like expensive cars?”

  Rami grinned again. “Cars, stereos, tools…” He shrugged. “And for some, a nice suit here and there.” Mia sighed as Rami held the door open for her.

  “If you’re going to insist,” she told him, rolling her eyes at the extravagance of it, “the least I can do is give in gracefully.” Rami laughed.

  “So shall we go to Nordstrom first, or Saks?” Mia sighed, shaking her head with a little smile.

  “First I kind of want to eat. Then you can take me to as many department stores as you can stand.”

  Mia followed Rami in her car, thinking about all of the things that would go along with receiving IVF treatments. She couldn’t even estimate the cost. Artificial insemination alone had been so expensive—she couldn’t imagine how much more the hormone shots, ultrasounds, blood tests a
nd all the other elements of the more aggressive treatment would be. “But if he wants to pay for it, then that’s his business,” she told herself.

  Their first stop was at a tiny boutique restaurant; the kind of place Mia had rarely seen, let alone visited, before Rami had come into her life, but Rami always insisted on taking her to lunch after their appointments, and he was a man of expensive tastes.

  Hesitantly, Mia pulled up to the valet stand. Even after three months of valet parking, she still couldn’t get used to it. She had her tip money ready, and handed it with her keys to the gawky young valet, averting her eyes from the inevitable questioning glance when he spotted what kind of car she drove.

  “You know, lots of rich guys drive clunkers,” Rami said, as he greeted her by the restaurant’s entrance. “It’s not like anyone’s going to notice.” Mia smiled.

  “I’m sorry, I still feel weird handing over a mid-nineties Volvo to a guy in a suit.”

  “Then don’t drive a mid-nineties Volvo,” Rami suggested.

  “Right, because it’s totally responsible for me to spend money on an expensive car right now.”

  Rami laughed, taking her arm and leading her towards the entrance. “Once you’ve had the baby, you can be as irresponsible as you want. And if you need more money…”

  “I am not going to ask for more money just to buy a car when the one I have is still perfectly functional,” Mia said flatly.

  “I’m just saying, you could. Especially with this IVF stuff; it sounds like it’s going to be really tough on you.”

  “Rami, stop,” Mia said, blushing as she started to feel more than a little guilty at his generosity. “You take me out to lunch after every one of these appointments, you’re taking me shopping for clothes… I already feel like you’re being too generous.”

  “Lunch is nothing,” Rami said. The woman at the hostess stand smiled warmly as they approached, and Mia saw her give Rami a long, appreciative glance. Rami turned to the woman and smiled. “I believe I have a standing reservation? Rami al-Hassan.” The woman nodded and keyed Rami’s name into the tablet in front of her.

  “I see that right here, Mr. al-Hassan,” she said, with a slightly smaller, but still polite, smile. “Just the two of you?” Rami nodded. “Right this way.”

  Mia could never quite get used to the feeling of walking into a high-end dining room, even having followed Rami’s lead into a more than a dozen of them over the course of their partnership. She tried not to feel too conspicuous and out of place as the hostess navigated them around islands of white linen, silver, and glittering crystal.

  They sat down, and the hostess gave each of them a menu—they had a choice of à la carte items or a lunch-sized tasting menu. “How long do you want to be here?” Rami asked her.

  “Considering we were in Dr. Farber’s office for over an hour and you didn’t forget about going shopping, I don’t think it matters how long we’re in here.”

  Rami grinned. “You’re starting to figure me out!”

  Mia laughed. “Maybe a little bit,” she admitted.

  “The tasting menu here is amazing. Seasonal, incredibly fresh—the chef is just a wizard.” Mia looked over the fine calligraphy on the menu in front of her and saw a dozen things she barely recognized, names and cooking terms that she could parse mingled with others that she wasn’t sure she could pronounce.

  “No wine, though,” Mia said, glancing at the suggestions that accompanied the various dishes.

  Rami shrugged. “Have you really missed it?”

  Mia considered. “Not really. One of these days though, after this is all over, I’m going to do one of these tasting menus the way it’s really supposed to be done.” Rami chuckled.

  “You’ll have a million dollars. You could do all of the tasting menus in the U.S. with that—wine included.”

  The waiter arrived at their table and both Rami and Mia ordered the tasting menu. Out of courtesy for Mia, Rami got water with his meal. Mia relaxed as one perfect, tiny item after another arrived at their table: salads perfectly dressed with vegetables she must have eaten before, only they’d never tasted so good; game, meat and fish in three-bite portions, all cooked to perfection; sauces that danced bright, rich flavors across her tongue. Over the many courses, she and Rami discussed which shops they would go to, and their plan once inside each one.

  “At Nordstrom I will have to make sure my personal shopper is there. She is sure to know exactly what will be best for you even as you start to show—although, maybe we’d better go shopping again if you start to outgrow your clothes.”

  “Rami,” Mia said, blushing as she took a bite of medium rare filet of grass-fed beef, “No. I will buy my clothes with my own money from a maternity store if I have to. I am not going to let you take me on another shopping spree.”

  “How are you going to stop me?” Rami asked with a little grin.

  “I’ll refuse to go and by then I’ll be so heavy you won’t be able to make me.”

  Rami laughed. “Fine. Only this once. But I think we’d better go to Macy’s too, for some everyday things.”

  “This was just supposed to be for New York! You are not giving me a whole new wardrobe, Rami. No, you’re not doing it.”

  “It’s my money,” Rami pointed out. “I can spend it how I like.”

  “I don’t want you spending it on me in the first place!” Mia looked around, taking a sip of her water to cover the embarrassment she felt at raising her voice. “I just…I’m not used to this, okay? I’ll let you buy me clothes for New York because you’re insisting on it, but please don’t make me feel guilty by giving me a lot of clothes I don’t need. No one ever sees me except you, my mom, Dr. Farber and the people at the grocery store.”

  “Okay Mia, you win,” Rami said, though a gleam in his dark eyes suggested that he hadn’t quite given in on the idea of giving her a complete wardrobe. “So just Nordstrom and Saks, maybe Bloomingdales?” Mia sighed.

  “Fine,” she said. “But I’m giving you a limit. You’re not spending more than…a thousand dollars. Okay?” Rami shook his head.

  “Not going to agree to that; what if I find the perfect everyday dress for you and it’s three hundred? That’s almost a third on just one thing!”

  “You are not buying me an ‘everyday dress’ for three hundred dollars!” Mia insisted.

  “Let me use my judgment,” Rami said firmly. “I won’t buy more than you can wear in New York for like… a week. That’s how long you’ll be there, right?” Mia sighed, putting the plate in front of her aside.

  “Yes,” she said. “Okay. A week’s worth of clothes, that’s it.” She still felt weird accepting extra gifts and attention from Rami, but after three months of meeting with him on a regular basis, she knew arguing about it wouldn’t get her anywhere.

  SIX

  “How are you feeling, baby girl?” Amie asked. Mia sighed as she sank down onto the couch, wincing as a pillow pressed up against the injection site on her buttock.

  “I’m tired,” she admitted. Mia had been prepared for the fact that IVF would be demanding on her body, what with all the hormones and the monitoring, and Dr. Farber had given her fair warning. But she hadn’t counted on just how exhausting it would all be; how much the injections would hurt. Mia had avoided telling Rami about it in too much detail because she wasn’t sure he could handle the reality of the process—and she didn’t want him thinking she wasn’t up to the task.

  “How long do you think this is going to go on for?” Her mother inquired, hesitantly.

  Mia licked her lips and shrugged, shifting so that her weight was more on her other hip. “The doctor says it can take multiple cycles. Even with everything…” she shrugged again. “It’s not perfect. Sometimes the implanted eggs don’t take, sometimes they can’t get the eggs out in time.”

  “But you’re being careful.” It was almost a question.