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By Root 446 0

on standby, waiting for the cancer cells to strike. For a long time I was terrified I was about to be struck down by motor neuron disease for no other reason than the fact that I’d read a very moving article about a man who had it. He first noticed he had a problem when his feet started hurting on the golf course. Whenever I’d feel a twinge in my foot, I’d think, OK, here we go. I told Alice about the article and she started to worry about it, too. We’d take off our high heels and massage our sore feet and discuss how we’d cope with getting around in wheelchairs, while Nick rolled his eyes and said, “Are you two for real?”

Alice is the other reason I didn’t expect infertility. We’ve always been so similar health-wise. We both get a dry, irritating cough every winter that takes exactly one month to go away. We have weak knees, bad eyesight, a slight dairy intolerance, and excellent teeth. When she had no problem getting pregnant, I thought that meant it would be the rule for me, too.

So it’s Alice’s fault that I never invested the appropriate time worrying about infertility. I never insured against it by worrying about it. I won’t make that mistake again. Now every day I remember to worry that Ben will die in a car accident on his way to work. I make sure I worry at regular intervals about Alice’s children—ticking off every terrible childhood disease: meningitis, leukemia. Before I go to sleep at night I worry that someone I love will die in the night. Every morning I worry that somebody I know will be killed in a terrorist attack that day. That means the terrorists have won, Ben tells me. He doesn’t understand that I’m fighting off the terrorists by worrying about them. It’s my own personal War on Terror.

That was a tiny joke, Dr. Hodges. Sometimes you don’t seem to get my jokes. I don’t know why I want you to laugh so badly. Ben finds me funny. He has this sudden bellow of appreciative laughter. He did, anyway—when I wasn’t an obsessive bore with only one topic of conversation.

I guess it might be sensible to cover this “worrying” issue at one of our sessions because it’s obviously just stupid superstition, and childish, too—as if I’m the center of the universe and what I think actually makes a difference. But I don’t know, I can already guess all the sensible things you’d say, the perceptive questions you’d ask, trying to gently lead me to my own personal “Eureka!” moment. It all seems sort of pointless and dull. I’m not going to stop worrying. I like worrying. I come from a long line of worriers. It’s in my blood.

I just want you to make it stop hurting, please, Dr. Hodges. That’s why I’m paying you the big bucks. I just want to feel like me again.

I have wandered off from the point again. My point was that I’ve been imagining what it would be like if I lost memory. So, I hit my head, and I wake up and I discover it’s 2008 and I’ve got fat and Alice has got thin and I’m married to this guy called Ben.

I wonder if I would fall in love with Ben all over again. That would be nice. I remember how it crept up so slowly on me, like that agonizingly slow old electric blanket which used to almost imperceptibly heat up my frosty sheets, second by second, until I’d think, “Hey, I haven’t shivered in a while. Actually, I’m warm. I’m blissfully warm.” That’s how it was with Ben. I moved on from “I really shouldn’t be leading this guy on when I have no interest” to “He’s not that bad-looking really” to “I sort of enjoy being with him” to “Actually, I’m crazy about him.”

I wonder if Ben would try to protect me from bad news, the way we’ve been skirting around certain subjects with Alice. He’s a terrible liar. I’d say, “How many children have we got?” and he’d mumble, “Well, we haven’t much luck there,” and he’d scratch his chin and clear his throat and look away.

I would bossily insist on all the details, and eventually he’d just have to go ahead and say it.

Over the last seven years, you’ve had three IVF pregnancies and two natural pregnancies. None of those theoretical babies became