Inconceivable by Carolyn Savage Read Free Book Online

onslaught?”
    “Sean, don’t think too far in advance right now or it will be overwhelming,” Father Cardone said. “I encourage you not to getso far ahead of where you are that you are dealing in the hypothetical, things that may never happen.”
    He was right. Based on our history, why should we think about the delivery? The bigger question was what we needed to do tomorrow. Yet my mind could not stop, and I know I wasn’t fully taking in what Sean and Father Cardone were talking about. I heard Sean ask him for the Church’s official position on IVF.
    “The Church’s stand on IVF is quite clear,” Father Cardone said. “The Church does not approve of procreation taking place outside of the intimate relationship between a man and a woman. It also rejects the notion of ‘spare’ embryos.”
    “We know that, Father Cardone,” Sean said. “That’s why we wanted to give every embryo we created a chance at life. Our belief in the sanctity of life is what got us into this situation.”
    I listened as they discussed church doctrine but had a hard time focusing because the world seemed upside down. Did it matter how we got to where we were? I didn’t think so. I was lost in conjectures about what the future would hold for us. I pictured ultrasounds where we would be forced to admire the progress of a baby we were going to give to someone else. I envisioned a doctor cutting the baby out and handing him or her to someone else to love, leaving us with nothing but wreckage.
    Okay, stop thinking. Just breathe. Slowly…inhale, exhale; inhale, exhale.
    I looked up at the clock. “I have to get my blood drawn,” I interrupted.
    Sean and Father Cardone looked up from their discussion. Father Cardone offered to escort us to the lab.
    “Science is not the enemy,” Father Cardone said as he left us at the lab. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that as I sat in the little lab chair, laying out my arm for my second blood draw of the day. The technician strapped a tight elastic band around my upper arm, andI could see her prepare the needle, but it felt as if I were watching myself in a movie.
    The needle slid swiftly into my vein, and the bright red blood filled the syringe chamber. This blood, my blood, would nourish the life inside me. I would do everything I could to make sure that this life grew strong and healthy. And then I would give this life away. How could science have done this to me? No, Father Cardone was right! Science hadn’t done this to me. Another human had made this mistake.
    One thing I was certain of was that God had not done this to me. I believed in a loving God. I also believed that God gives us free will. The person responsible for doing this exercised his or her free will by choosing not to protect me. Out of carelessness, this person disregarded my safety. No, God did not do this to me. God loved me. God loved my family. That was one thing that I knew.
    SEAN
    When we arrived home, we had to pretend that everything was fine. Carolyn had asked our sister-in-law JoAnn to get MK from my mom and bring her home where she could watch all the children for the evening. She was the only one who knew we were getting the pregnancy test results that day. We gave her the thumbs-up, and she smiled and mouthed, Congratulations . We had to act as though we were controlling our excitement when we were, in fact, suppressing our anger.
    When the boys were settled and Mary Kate was in bed, I laced up my running shoes, put on my hat and gloves, and went on my regular evening run. When I run, I am away from the pressures of the day. Without distractions, thoughts rise up, come through me, in a form of running meditation.
    I started down the street that leads out of our little subdivision and turned right at the dilapidated barn just across the road, a remnant of the area’s farming days. When we bought our house, Carolyn and I agreed that this was the one we would grow old in. Carolyn had had to work hard at persuading