He started doing strange things.
The dog that was. At first he'd walk up and seemed to sniff and paw at her stomach causing Erin to wonder if she had dropped food on her shirt. Then he started laying across her lap when she'd watch tv, trying to burrow into her stomach. She was all for cuddling with Alfie but at about a hundred pounds he was far from a lap dog. And he needed to leave her stomach the hell alone.
One day while she was out for a walk with him she accidentally bumped into a man walking the other way, spilling her coffee. Both Erin and the man rushed to apologize, the man reaching out instictively towards her coffee stained shirt as he asked if she was okay. Alfie pushed between them barking and growling. His behaviour shocked Erin. The man posed no threat to her and Alfie had long since outgrew his fear and irrational behaviour around strangers in the past three years.
Almost two weeks after the strange behaviour began Erin was making small talk with the receptionist, Ava, at the fertility clinic. She was back in for more tests but she already knew what the results would be. Now at the end of their forth cycle of hormone treatments Erin wasn't holding out much hope that they'd been successful, she hadn't managed to ovulate despite sticking herself with needles full of stuff that Jay dubbed 'magic baby making juice' that made her head crazy, her body feel weird and her emotions raw. She was starting to prepare herself for the reality that their baby was going to be conceived under a microscope in a petri dish and then inserted into her. It was about the least romantic thing she could imagine. The receptionist got a funny smile on her face when Erin started talking about how strange Alfie was acting lately. Erin didn't think much of it. She knew she sounded like a crazy dog lady.
She dutifully took her little plastic jar to the bathroom, remembering a time when she'd had to pee in a cup to keep her job. The whole process seemed cold and clinical. Even their love making was now controlled by numbers and science. She understood why couples with infertility issues were three times as likely to separate, one of many many facts the nurse practitioner had laid on them during their first real appointment. She'd handed them pamphlets on couples counselling along with other helpful pamphlets on diet, exercise, stress reduction and the side affects if hormone treatments. And that was all before the doctor came in the room. They'd read them all and then Jay had googled even more information and even found videos for them to watch online. He stocked the fridge with foods that were supposed to help with fertility. She'd become so overwhelmed trying to remember when the best time to eat certain foods were and which position to lay in after sex and all the other gazillion helpful ways to make their treatments a success she lost her shit one night after starting this last round.
"I said I want a damn cheese burger," she'd screamed at Jay when he'd tried to talk her into yet another one of his 'baby making meals' for dinner. "I don't give a shit how much fibre or protein is in that soup, I'm not a god damn lab rat! And I'm sick of being treated like one. One fucking cheese burger isn't gonna make a god damn difference!"
Jay froze, eyes wide. Alfie, who'd been chewing on a toy near Erin's feet got up and slipped in behind Jay the way he always did whenever he thought he was in trouble with her.
"Erin, I," Jay began.
"You what? What Jay? You're just trying to be helpful? Supportive? Remind me of everything I'm doing wrong? You have no fucking clue what it's like. It's not your body that gets stuck with needles, it's not your blood they take, it's not your vagina they poke and probe, it's not you that has to remember to do fifty fucking thousand things a day to try and force your body to make a baby and it's not you that feels like a useless idiot when it doesn't work!"
She watched a barage of emotions cross Jay's face and for a moment she'd expected him to scream back at her, or worse, walk out. She regretted her words immediately, knowing damn well Jay was trying to do everything he could to be present and supportive through this. He'd gone to every doctors appointment, surprised her with a spa day to help her relax and forget the stress and intrusiveness of everything she was going through, and he went out of his way to make romantic evenings to help keep things from feeling so clinical and planned in the bedroom. He didn't scream back and he didn't leave.
