Ben Elton - Inconceivable

“ I feel good inside,” I told him, and then I was sick into the glove compartment, but it’s all right, the doctors said that might happen. All right for me, that is, not Sam, who had to clear it out.

Dear Sam

We began principal photography today. God, it was exciting. We’re filming in an old warehouse in Docklands, which they’ve done out as the hospital. I took the light railway which is not a bad service. They offered to send a car for me but I said no. Lucy might have wondered why commissioning editors of Radio were suddenly being treated so grandly. When I left she was still in bed. I took her a cup of herbal and longed to tell her where I was going. It would have been so wonderful.

“Bye, darling, I’m just off to a film location where about a hundred people are working on MY FILM.”

It’s the thing I’ve dreamt of all my life. What’s more, Lucy has shared so many of those dreams, and now they’ve come true I can’t even share it with her. How cruel is that? Fate can be an absolute bugger.

I’ll tell her soon, I swear it. The moment we’re through this IVF cycle. George says it’s pointless to put it off and that there’ll never be a good time, but I can’t possibly tell her now, she’s too fragile. She’s taken the week off work (although they say you don’t have to) and seems to be in a world of her own. Sort of serene, but very delicate. She says she’s trying to be entirely relaxed and meditative. Aspiring, apparently, to an absolute calmness within. Well, I don’t think she’d be very calm within if I said to her, “Oh, by the way, darling, I’ve turned our mutual agony into a movie and what’s more you’ve unwittingly written half of it”

How did I get into this? I can’t believe it’s such a mess. I’m sure I had no choice. Didn’t I? I definitely seem to remember having no choice, but it’s all gone a bit hazy.

I must say, though, that the day was wonderful. Incredibly exciting. Just seeing all the cameras and cables and trucks and catering and actors and crew, and all because of me. It felt fantastic. People kept coming up to me and asking if I was OK for coffee and saying, “It’s a wonderful script. When I read it I cried.”

Ewan was starting with Rachel’s laparoscopy and at first I thought he must have sacked Nimnh because an entirely different actress was on set in the operation smock. I was just getting up the courage to protest to Ewan because I think Nimnh is wonderful when I noticed Nimnh sitting in a folding chair smoking a cigarette. On further investigation it turned out that the new actress was a bottom double! Imagine it! Grand, or what?

It seems there’d been a row earlier that morning when despite Nimnh’s protests Ewan had been adamant about filming Rachel from behind getting into bed with the open-backed smock on.

“For Christ’s sake, it’s not about perving on her arse! It’s about her vulnerability! Can’t you see that?” he exclaimed. “This woman is a piece of meat, stripped of dignity. Her arse is quite literally on the line and we need to see it!”

Well, Nimnh had simply folded her arms and refused point blank. She said she did not do two Desdemonas and a Rosalind at the RSC in order to have her bum used to sell videos. I thought she was absolutely right, actually, although like every man on the set I would have loved to see the bum under discussion.

Thinking about it, that’s probably another good reason why she shouldn’t have to show it. Frankly, I find balancing my sexual politics with my sexual desires is a constant struggle.

Dear Penny

It’s three days now since the egg extraction and today was the day to have it all put back in. That is if there’s anything to put back, which was the first anxiety. All the way in in the car we were quiet, both of us wondering if our eggs and sperm had even managed to conceive at all, which they might very well not have done.

Well it turned out all right, in that we had managed to create seven embryos, which they said was good. A doctor took us aside into a little room and it all got very serious as she explained that some of the embryos are good and some are not so good, and one was useless because although the egg had been fertilized the embryo had already gone wrong, etc., etc.

Anyway, the long and the short of it was that we had two very good and two pretty good. The doctor said that they were prepared to insert three if we insisted, but she strongly recommended that we do only two, which I was very happy to go along with. I mean the possibility of triplets is pretty daunting. I had been hoping that they would freeze the other two good ones but they don’t seem to encourage that at Spannerfield. I don’t know why. Anyway, although the consultation was presented as a series of choices for us, in the long run, let’s face it, you do what you’re told, don’t you? I mean I don’t know one end of a two-celled embryo from another (if indeed they have ends). That’s why you have doctors. Anyway, that was it. We agreed that two embryos be reinserted and the rest would be donated to the hospital for research, which is apparently their usual procedure if the donors have no objections, which we didn’t.

The reinsertion was very quick indeed. No anaesthetic or anything. They just wheel you in, spread your legs, and squirt them up. It’s incredibly low tech really when you consider the dazzling medical science that has led up to it. First they show you the fertilized embryos on a little telly screen, then a big tube appears on the screen (actually it’s about a hair’s breadth) and sucks them up. Then a nurse brings the tube through to the doctor (it’s like a very long thin syringe). The doctor puts it up your fanny and, guided by an ultrasound picture, she injects the embryos into your womb. It takes about a minute unless the embryos get stuck in the tube, which they didn’t with us.

It’s a hell of a lot easier than the egg extraction. The only real discomfort is that they make you do it with a full bladder because for some reason this makes for a clearer picture. Afterwards they won’t let you wee for about three quarters of an hour, which is absolutely excruciating and you keep feeling that the terrible pressure must be crushing the life out of your poor embryos.

Then they let you go home. As we were getting ready to leave, Charles, the nurse, came in with a printout of the computer image of our two embryos, both of which were already dividing into further cells.

“ This is them,” he said. “Good luck.”

When we got home Sam made some tea and I just sat in the sitting room staring at the photo, thinking that this could be the first photo in an album of our children’s lives. It’s not many kids who get to see themselves when they were only two or three cells big.

Sam reminded me that the chances are that these ones won’t either and I know that, of course, but I’m sure that mental attitude has an effect on the physical self. I know I can’t will it to happen, but the least I can do is give Dick and Debbie the most positive start in life that I can.

Yes, all right, I’ve given them names! And I’m not embarrassed about it either. They’re mine, aren’t they? They exist, don’t they? At least they did when the picture was taken. And now? Who knows? I could see that Sam was not at all sure about personalizing things in this way. But why not? They’re fertilized embryos! That’s a huge step for us. Something we might easily not have been able to do. We have to be positive, we’re so far down the road.

Sam reminded me yet again that it’s only a one in five chance. Well, I know! I know. Of course the odds are long, but they’re not impossible. Twenty per cent isn’t a bad shot. When my photo was taken they were alive.