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Back The Surrogate Save as PDF
Chapters (65)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. Part One
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-One
  26. Twenty-Two
  27. Twenty-Three
  28. Twenty-Four
  29. Twenty-Five
  30. Twenty-Six
  31. Twenty-Seven
  32. Twenty-Eight
  33. Twenty-Nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-One
  36. Thirty-Two
  37. Thirty-Three
  38. Part Two
  39. Thirty-Four
  40. Thirty-Five
  41. Thirty-Six
  42. Thirty-Seven
  43. Thirty-Eight
  44. Thirty-Nine
  45. Forty
  46. Forty-One
  47. Forty-Two
  48. Forty-Three
  49. Forty-Four
  50. Forty-Five
  51. Forty-Six
  52. Forty-Seven
  53. Forty-Eight
  54. Forty-Nine
  55. Fifty
  56. Fifty-One
  57. Part Three
  58. Fifty-Two
  59. Fifty-Three
  60. Fifty-Four
  61. Fifty-Five
  62. Fifty-Six
  63. Acknowledgments
  64. About the Author
  65. About the Publisher

The director looked away from us and sat back in her chair. After a few quiet moments, she set down her pen on her notepad. “Look, we’re all on the same team here,” she said. “And I can say with, you know . . . these types of situations—”

“These types of situations?” Ruth had gathered herself and sat up at attention. I wished the director had chosen her words more carefully. She didn’t know she was speaking to a woman whose profession was words and meaning and truth. “What do you mean, exactly?” Ruth continued to press. “You mean surrogacy, don’t you?”

This had been a sore spot for Ruth. She believed that, as the intended mother, she’d experienced second-class treatment and an undercurrent of disapproval at many of the stages of the process. She’d complained to me at night about the way the nurses stared at her, like she was, in her words, the freak at the circus. She’d caught them whispering. She felt they didn’t view her as the baby’s mom. And no matter how much I tried to convince her not to worry about others’ opinions, she said she felt like she had a flashing neon sign over her head that said, “Infertile—Used a Surrogate.”

“Yes, certainly,” said the director, “with surrogacy situations, there is a greater degree of risk. A risk of this type of thing happening.”

I sat with my head down, thinking. I was trying to find a solution. I was considering what our legal options might be and playing them out in my head. And I was listening.

“I mean the risk of having the birth mom change her mind,” the director said with some delicacy. “We have teenage pregnancies, and it’s not uncommon that we see a change of heart in adoption situations. It’s very charged. It can be traumatic.”

Oh, it had been plenty traumatic earlier this morning. When the phone had rung in the still-dark bedroom, and Ruth had switched on the lamp while I pressed the speakerphone button so we both could hear. The hospital had called to inform us, “We have difficult news,” and “It appears she has taken the baby” and “We have alerted the hospital security team.” “Do you have a way to reach Ms. Scott, because that may be the most effective way to resolve this,” they’d asked. We’d given them her phone number, but there was no answer. We’d been listed as her emergency contacts, which seemed ridiculous in hindsight.