I stared at the clinical words, my brain struggling to process the biological impossibility staring me directly in the face. Complete sterility. It meant Derek had never produced a single viable sperm cell in his entire adult life. He could not father a child naturally.
He could not father a child through artificial insemination. He was entirely, fundamentally sterile. He has known since college, DeAndre explained quietly. He pays that clinic a massive recurring retainer to keep his medical records permanently locked under a very strict VIP non-disclosure agreement.
He was terrified that his high society friends, or worse, his controlling mother, would find out the golden boy of the Foster family was a genetic dead end. My hands began to tremble. Not from fear, but from a profound, terrifying realization that shook the very core of my reality. I looked over at the portable crib in the corner of the hotel room.
Lily was sleeping peacefully, her tiny chest rising and falling, completely unaware of the storm gathering around her. I walked slowly over to the crib and looked down at my beautiful one year old daughter. I thought back to the agonizing months before my military deployment. Derek and I had agreed to try in vitro fertilization so we could have a baby before I shipped out.
He had played the role of the supportive husband perfectly. He held my hand in the clinic waiting room. He went into the private room to provide his sample. He bought me flowers and celebrated with me when the doctor called to say the embryo transfer was successful.
But if Derek was entirely sterile, his sample would have been absolutely useless. It would have been nothing but dead cells. The laboratory technicians at the fertility clinic would have known immediately. They would have called us into the office and told us the cycle was a complete failure due to severe male factor infertility.
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