Ben Elton - Inconceivable

She’s wrong about me not really wanting children and I told her so. I told her I really do want us to have children, that I want it with all my heart, and I do. I told her I wanted it because I love her and that our children would be an extension and expression of that love. Another part of us. But if it doesn’t happen then we’ll still have us, that our love will be no less whole… and then I realized that I was quoting the bloody script! And I couldn’t remember whether I’d said it before, or written it in my book, or made it up for the film, or nicked it from Lucy’s book! I suddenly realized that I no longer knew whose emotions were whose. I thought I’ve got to tell her, right now. And I did try. I started to, but I couldn’t. Not now. She’s having her eggs collected tomorrow.

Sam was a bit distracted, actually. Probably the fact that he’s got to have another hospital wank tomorrow. He hates that so much. Oh well, maybe it’ll be for the last time. Who knows? If we could only score. Anyway, he didn’t say much. I think he wanted to but he didn’t and I didn’t press him. We just held each other. In fact it got quite heated for a minute, but I reminded him that if we made love tonight we could end up with twelve. So we stopped. I feel incredibly close to Sam tonight. I told him that I love him and that it gives me strength to know that whatever happens I’m safe in that love.

I thought he was going to cry. Then I thought he was going to tell me something. Then he didn’t say anything.

Dear Sam

This morning Lucy and I went to Spannerfield for the big day of egg and sperm collection. We got there at 6.50 a.m. for 7 as instructed, to find a lengthy queue of cold, sheepish-looking people already there. Most of them were women in for injections because they don’t have husbands like me who have the sheer iron guts to do it themselves. Some of us, however, about ten couples, were in for the full business and we were duly led off to a ward with a row of curtained-off beds in it.

There was a rather nice nurse called Charles. Lucy knew him already but it was all new for us husbands (or partners).

“All right, Lucy,” said Charles. “We’ll just pop this on and hop into bo-bos and, Sam, we’ll be wanting a little deposit from you for the sperm bank, so I’ll just leave a paying-in pot here and I’ll call you when there’s a service till free.”

Another wanking pot. Great. When I was a kid blithely spanking the plank at any opportunity that arose I never would have even dreamt that I was in fact rehearsing for what would one day be perhaps the most important day of my life.

Lucy had to put on a sort of nightie-smock that was entirely open at the back. She made a comment about it that nearly made me drop the tossing instructions that I was idly perusing, as if I didn’t know them by heart by now.

“Dignified little number,” she said. “Think I’ll wear it to a première.”

For a moment I was completely thrown.

“Première!” I said with what could only have been incriminating alarm. “Première of what?”

“Nothing, just any old première,” she replied, looking at me rather strangely. “I was joking.”

Just then Charles returned and summoned me to do my duty. He did this by poking his head round the curtain and beckoning me with an ominous-looking finger.

“Your chamber awaits,” he said. And with grim resignation I took up my pot and went.

There are at least two rooms at the actual unit so the pressure of the queue was somewhat alleviated. In fact Charles told me that I had as much time as I liked because we were all in for the whole day anyway.

Well, that was some small comfort, but having said it you’ve said everything, because this was the most pressurized visit to Mrs Hand of them all. This, as they say, was shit or bust time and as I sat there alone, in the little room, trousers round my ankles (having duly washed my knob as instructed) I contemplated the awesome nature of my responsibilities. My wife, whom I love very very much, has just gone through six weeks of the most appallingly intrusive therapy. Drugs have been pumped into her at every hour of the day, forcing her body to shut down in a premature menopause prior to it being taken over and coerced into a grotesque fertility, over-producing eggs until her ovaries have become heavy, bloated and painful. Every other day for weeks she has traipsed across London to sit in queues with other desperate women, waiting to have various body fluids taken from her and to have her most intimate womanly self probed and manipulated. The reason for all this is of course her desperate, heart-rending longing for a child, a longing which this day may possibly heal.

Now if at this point I fail to ejaculate successfully into a pot, making absolutely sure that I catch the first spurt, this whole dreadful business will have been a total waste of time. So there I sat with all that pressure, alone in a room, attempting to coax my penis into a firm enough condition for me to masturbate successfully and fulfil the trust and the dreams of the woman I love.

Sam looked quite pale when he returned from doing his duty. He said he thought he’d got enough. I said I damn well hoped so. They only need one.

The egg extraction was a rather weird experience. Being there with Lucy while the doctors take over makes you feel like an awkward guest at your own party. When our time came they wheeled Lucy into the theatre, while I padded along behind feeling a complete prat in my green gown, raincap and plastic galoshes.

I sat up at the non-business end and Lucy was soon snoring rather fitfully, having been put out for the count. They had her legs up in stirrups and a doctor lost no time in getting down to business. There was a little television screen on which he could see what he was doing through some ultrasound technique or other and he talked me through it.

“So the white dot on the screen is the needle. Can you see it moving? I’m lining it up with the follicle, which I pierce. Can you see it deflating?”

I didn’t answer because it was clearly more of a statement than a question. Besides, I felt too intimidated to speak. I didn’t wish to distract anybody by word or deed. Nonetheless, I could see what he was describing – shadowy translucent bubbles being popped by the little white dot and then collapsing as he sucked them out.

“Now we’re removing the fluid from inside the follicle, within which should be the eggs.”

Sure enough, they were siphoning out test tube after test tube of pale red liquid and then handing them through a little kitchen hatch into what I presumed was the lab.

It was extraordinary. The lady through the hatch kept shouting, “One egg… two more eggs… another egg,” like a dinner lady. It reminded me of that scene in 101 Dalmatians where the nurse keeps rushing out excitedly saying “More puppies!” Anyway, in the end the doctor had got the lot and so he backed up the Pickford’s removal van between Lucy’s legs and started to dismantle the scaffolding rig he’d put up her.

On the way home in the car Sam told me all about it. I was feeling pretty woozy anyway and I can’t say that stories of doctors sucking eggs out of my vagina made me feel much better. Still, at least it’s over. Sam says they told him they got twelve eggs, which was about what they wanted. He said he hoped he’d managed to provide twelve sperm, but I think he was joking.

It was so strange to think that at that very moment, as we drove home, back in the hospital his sperm were being whirled round in a centrifuge prior to being shaken up in a tube with my eggs.

We both agreed that the whole experience was one that we were not anxious to repeat. I said that perhaps we wouldn’t have to. After all, twins are quite common with IVF, even triplets (my God!). Sam told me not to jinx us, but I don’t know. I just have this funny feeling that it’s going to work.