In the waiting room, we flipped through magazines and waited our turn until Eric was called. "Did you bring the sample with you?" the nurse asked. We looked at her, mystified; how on earth would we have transported said sample? In Tupperware? He answered in the negative, and a few minutes later he was called again, handed a cup, and pointed in the direction of a door in the back of the lab.

A few minutes later, I was called. The nurse led me to a chair and prepared my arm. I was a bit relieved; Eric had suggested that they might have to take the blood from my hand instead, as they had done to him at his last glucose check.

"Are you a good 'sticker'?" I asked in a voice that trembled a little more than I felt was appropriate for a grown adult.

"I'll use the baby needle," she said. "Redheads are sometimes hard to stick, and we don't know why." My stomach gave a disquieting lurch; I've never been fond of needles, especially since my days as a regular, twice-a-week plasma seller in college. Sometimes I still feel little twinges in my arm. Happily, this nurse did an admirable job; when she was finished, she handed me a slip of paper with several meal plans on it. I read it, and looked up, confused.

"No Glucola for the tolerance test?"
"No, just eat one of these meals. You can go to our cafeteria, go out to eat, or go home, but when you take the last bite, check your watch and come back in two hours."
"Okay, that sounds good."
"And let us know when you're due."

My head swung around sharply. "What?"

"When you're due back from breakfast, you know? So we can be ready for you."

Wincing at her unfortunate choice of words, I waited for Eric to come back from his own test. When he arrived, he looked very disappointed.

"It was just a bathroom! Not even a single magazine! And I could hear everybody's conversations, so it was hard to concentrate on what I was doing..." He perked up a bit when I showed him the slip, and we went down to the cafeteria to eat what proved to be an extremely large breakfast:

• On large glass of orange juice;
• One scrambled egg;
• One sweet roll;
• One pat butter;
• One cup Rice Crispies cereal;
• One cup of milk
• One tablespoon of sugar

And there was the answer. This is why we've had no luck after trying for eight cycles. My charts were correct; we were timing everything all right. We just didn't have the materials at hand. The last number, the actual sperm count, was the big problem: the number wasn't anywhere close to the reference range.

Eric was in surprisingly good humor. "Wow, if only I'd known this when I was younger!" he chuckled. "I could have saved myself so much worry!" I didn't find the joke nearly as funny as he did, but I was relieved that he didn't seem to be overly depressed over the results. Nervous that he was perhaps cracking jokes to cover up any pride injury, I pressed him a little to tell me how he was feeling. He laughed a bit.

"Honey, I don't really mind being infertile. I'm just worried about how it will affect you."

Those words hit me like a fist in the stomach. He didn't mind? We're facing a potentially huge problem, one that could necessitate all manner of medical help in ever conceiving a child, and he didn't care?

Eric didn't seem to notice the shock on my face. After a few moments of silence, he turned to look at me. "Are you all right?" he said. Words couldn't explain how alone I felt at that moment.

Eric's major concern, at this point, is whether or not this is going to damage our relationship. It won't; I know, in the bottom of my heart, that I would much rather be with him and childless than without him and be a mother. I'm just having difficulty accepting the fact that I may have to give up my dreams of motherhood. I won't let my own struggles hurt my marriage.

We'll cross that road if we come to it. For now, we'll wait for the phone call from the doctor on Monday, which will probably be to tell Eric to schedule another semen analysis and to make an appointment with a urologist. And, of course, my own test results are still hanging over my head, as well. Maybe both of our bodies will be to blame for our childlessness.