Free Beginnings (Crawley Creek Prequel) by Lori King

Chapter 1
     
    “I’m sorry Mrs. Crawley, but the news isn’t
good.” The doctor’s kind face had deep-set wrinkles bracketing his
thin lips and framed a smile, but today they made his tipped frown
seem pitifully sad. “It seems you have a hostile uterus.”
    Sera stared at him trying to absorb his
words, but all she heard was “hostile”.
    “Hostile?”
    “Yes. Basically your womb isn’t an ideal
place for the implantation of a fertilized embryo. The likelihood
of you ever conceiving is slim, and even if you did conceive, the
chances that the pregnancy would be supported longer than the first
trimester are extremely improbable. I’m sorry. I know that’s not
what you were hoping to hear—”
    “Not what I was hoping to hear?” She knew
she was in shock, and that made it all the easier to blast her
disappointment with anger. “I think that’s putting it rather mildly
Martin, don’t you? And why are you calling me Mrs. Crawley? My name
is Sera, and I’ve been coming to you for almost fifteen years. You
know everything there is to know about my physical health, and
you’ve never once mentioned that I had a hostile womb.”
    “Seraphina it’s not something I could have
known based on the standard pelvic tests we do annually. The
fertility testing you had in Grand Forks highlighted some
disturbing inconsistencies. As you know fertility science is still
in its infancy. We only know so much about why the female
reproductive organs are sometimes lacking. I’ve reviewed your tests
extensively, and I even had a colleague of mine review them for a
second opinion. Unfortunately, he agreed with my results. You’re
barren.” Martin Warburg took off his glasses and set them on the
desk in front of him, his gaze sympathetic. After several moments
of tense silence, he sighed and gestured to the phone on his desk.
“Would you like me to call Abe for you?”
    Abe. Her husband. The man who’d loved her
for the last fifteen years unconditionally. The sweetest, kindest
soul on the planet. He’d supported her through month after month of
negative pregnancy tests, and ten years of disappointment. Now she
had to tell him that she was a defective wife. Unable to give him
the children he so badly wanted. The family they’d dreamed of
creating together.
    “No. Thank you, but I need some time
to...um...digest this information. I’ll talk to him soon.” Rising
from the hard wooden chair where all of her dreams had been dashed,
Seraphina Crawley brushed her braid behind her shoulder, and picked
up her pocketbook. “Thank you, Doctor.”
    Martin rose to his feet quickly, and began
to move her way. “Sera, you shouldn’t be alone to process this
news. Let me call Abe and have him come collect you. Your car will
be fine here in the lot.”
    “I said, no thank you. I appreciate
everything you’ve done for me and all the time you’ve devoted to
this, but now that we know how futile it is... Well, I suppose it’s
best to just let the things that are out of our control, go. Tell
Lenora that I said hello.” Reaching for the handle on the door, she
hurried to put as much distance as possible between herself and the
terrible news.
    The sunshine was dimmer, and the day seemed
significantly drearier as she stepped out of the office onto the
sidewalk. Montford was a very small town, so there was no one on
the street to see her sorrow as tears began to fall from her eyes.
By the time she’d settled in behind the wheel of her car, she was
gasping for air around the sobs of pain that echoed around her.
Logically, she knew they were from her own throat, but somehow it
seemed she was completely separate from the emotional response. She
could feel herself trembling, hear the sniffles, and taste the
vomit on the back of her tongue, but she still wasn’t ready to
accept it was real. No matter what she did, or how healthy she
lived her life, she’d never be a mother.
    She’d known instinctively for a while that
something was wrong.