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shoulder.
    â€˜Oh God, I think I’m going to be sick,’ she gasped suddenly.
    Anna fled to the bathroom, making it just in time before she started throwing up violently. Mac followed her, took a face washer from the cabinet and wet it under the tap. He dragged the stool over and sat beside her, rubbing her back, wiping her face between bouts. He stayed even though it turned his stomach to watch his wife hunched over a toilet bowl, heaving her heart up. Sometimes he hated everything about IVF. The scientists who had developed it, the clinics that administered it, the hope it fostered, the pain it caused. IVF had changed their lives. They had thought they were incomplete without a baby, unhappy somehow. But Mac had never been so unhappy in his whole life. And he didn’t know how they could ever make it back to where they were before.
    When it was over, he helped Anna over to the sink, where she washed her face and rinsed out her mouth. She was still shaky as he walked her back out to the bed and turned down the covers for her. Sheclimbed in gingerly, turning on her side and curling up. Mac leaned down and kissed the side of her head, and she reached up to grab his arm. ‘Please stay with me,’ she said in a small, fragile voice.
    He patted her hand. ‘Sure.’ He went around the room lowering the blinds, collecting Anna’s clothes from the floor and laying them neatly across a chair. He took off his shoes and climbed onto the bed behind her, on top of the covers. He brought one arm around her and she laced her fingers through his.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ she whimpered.
    â€˜It’s okay.’
    â€˜You must be disgusted.’
    â€˜Don’t say that.’
    She was quiet for a while, and Mac sensed her breathing settling into a sleeping rhythm.
    â€˜I want to try again, Mac,’ she said, her voice faint but distinct. ‘As soon as we can.’
    His heart froze.
    â€˜Shhh . . .’ he soothed. ‘Go to sleep.’
    He remembered being surprised when Anna agreed to move to Sydney so readily. Mac had been offered an irresistible promotion, but Anna had built up a solid case load within a reputable practice and he was unsure how she would feel about leaving it to start all over again. Moreover she was unusually close to her parents, and they to her. That had never bothered Mac, they were decent people and Anna was their only child.
    But she had jumped at the chance to leave Melbourne and had set about enthusiastically updating her resume and researching real estate. They decided to rent an apartment in the city for the first six months, and Anna set up interviews with a number of practices. One evening after they were settled, she sat Mac down with a drink and announced she wanted to start investigations into their infertility.
    That was the first Mac had heard anything of their apparent infertility. He knew they hadn’t been using any birth control for . . . maybe a year? But she had corrected him – it had been almost two years.
    When Anna first suggested going off the pill she had assured him it would take her some time to fall pregnant, if she was anything like her mother. That was fine with Mac, whatever she wanted. He was too involved in his work to dwell on it much and Anna hadn’t mentioned it again. It had more or less sunk to the back of his mind. The reality of a baby or a child had not taken shape yet.
    But it had never been far from Anna’s mind. She didn’t want to think the worst, so she came up with dozens of rationalisations for why she wasn’t falling pregnant. She was becoming as bad as some of her clients. Then she started to track her cycle obsessively, but even if they had sex every night at the appropriate time of the month, she still didn’t conceive. She read everything she could find and began to form more educated opinions to explain why she wasn’t falling pregnant. Finally Anna had to face the