Emily Dickinson

"Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune--without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me."

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An uncommon side effect, he says.

Rare but not unheard of.

The fertility drugs of now insure that one child is born.

And only one.

But only if you have the money to pay for the highest echelon of any given drug.

Needless to say, they didn’t have that kind of money.

So what he used was cheaper, reliable, but infinitely cheaper.

It has side effects.

He didn’t know whether he should be happy for her, or if he should apologize.

She didn’t know either.

She'd been ready for one child.

But two?

She’s not upset, not unhappy.

Just shocked.

She had asked for the one, hardly daring to believe that she would be given that much.

And now she finds that she has been given two.

In the begining she had been afraid.

She was sick so often, it had started a mere week after she had been impregnated, Simon had been worried.

He hadn’t said anything, but for those that knew him, the very fact that he would not give a straight answer, the way he avoided eye contact, the way he kept his face expressionless, said it all for him.

A week after she had been given something she had thought was lost to her forever, she feared she would lose it.

She didn’t think she could have survived the loss.

No matter that there was more sperm, more drugs, more time.

If she had lost this pregnancy, she would have lost everything.

All over again.

And she couldn’t do that again.

But the weeks passed, with her still pregnant, enduring daily checkups.

And nearly hourly vomiting.

She carried a bucket everywhere.

Even into Badger’s “