Author: lisa
Subject: Exhale - July 2007 (yes July) HBX challenge response – sort of

A July 2007 HBX challenge response – sort of – I did change the personal pronoun in the quote. To refresh your memory the challenge lines were:
"Hell, when do they have time to be happy?"
"They don’t have to find time. They just are. Don’t you really want that?”

A/N: I started this little story in July. However, I got stuck and never finished it. Then a discussion on the Lifestyles board a couple of weeks ago inspired me to complete it. However, my obstacle then was time. So here it is, two months late.

A special word of thanks to Ronda (JAG Junkie) for giving me invaluable insight and sharing her experience with this issue.


Exhale
~ by lisa

Rolling over, I reach for the one I’ve discovered I can’t sleep without. My seeking arms come up empty and I realize Mac must still be down in our office working on reports. Heaving a sigh, I pull her pillow against me breathing in her scent – a very poor substitute for the real thing.

I stretch out in the bed where I first made love to Mac. In the last twelve months, having Mac in my bed – our bed - has become a welcome invasion. I’ll admit that I never felt completely at ease with the intimacy of sharing my bed with women over the years. To be honest, I always felt a little awkward. I guess I kept a part of myself closed off from the women I was with. But I now know I never really knew what true intimacy was until Mac. And since I’ve come to that realization, I never want to let her go. The irony is that in the past, openness, letting someone in, was my greatest fear. Now the thought of losing that closeness – of losing Mac – scares me spitless. It seems too good to be true that Mac is actually my wife. I sometimes fear I’ll wake up and find the last twelve months have all been a dream.

My one regret in marrying Mac is that it took us nine years to finally get together. When we first made love surrounded by packing boxes, I found complete happiness for the first time. To think I missed out on years of that wonder. Lovemaking with Mac, loving her and being loved in return, is mesmerizing, like nothing I’ve ever experienced. And even if she hadn’t said the same, her responses to the softest touch of my hand tell me everything I need to know.

Not that married life has been all a bed of roses. There’ve been a few thorns along the way. We spent nine years not only as partners and friends, but also as worthy adversaries. The instinct to engage the other in a game of one-upmanship does not easily die. Sometimes it seems I can’t help but challenge her just to get a reaction. I love to see her eyes spark! We’ve had a number of silly arguments as well as a couple of no-holds barred exchanges. But one thing we’ve become much better at is communication. And, we’ve mastered the art of making up. Oh, the wonders of make up sex!

However, the 500 pound gorilla in our marriage, the shadow that has dimmed the ecstatic happiness we have together, has been my inability to make her pregnant. We knew the chances were slim to none that she could conceive, but I never truly believed it. Call me cocky, but I half expected she’d become pregnant the first time we made love. That’s how it seems to happen in fiction. If I had ever admitted those expectations to Mac, I know she would just shake her head at my own inflated view of my reproductive abilities. While I know the reason for our lack of conception is the endometriosis and not my swimmers, I can’t help but blame myself for not giving her what her heart desires.

When I think of our baby deal, and I think of it all too often, her words come back to haunt me. “My biological clock is going off and I keep hitting the snooze button.” At the time, I had assured her she would have children some day. Hell, I promised I would ensure that fact myself. But it’s one promise I haven’t been able to keep. I’m the one that hit the snooze button by setting the timeline for five years. Why didn’t I say three, or even four? That time in her office when I nervously asked her if she wanted to move up our deal, what would have happened if she had said yes? Would we be parents now?

When we shook hands on the front steps of JAG all those years ago, I first dreamed of a son – with Mac’s looks and my brains – a boy to do all the things with that I missed out on with my father. But over time, more and more I imagined a little girl. Except the daughter I pictured always looked like Mac, not me. I wouldn’t care whose brains she had. Actually she’d probably be better off with Mac’s. But she would be daddy’s little girl. A daughter to shower with the love and happiness that Mac was denied as a child. A little girl who would be protected and cherished and have me wrapped around her little finger.

I know I would be overjoyed to be a father - the culmination of a plan I was sure would someday unfold. But if it never happens I can live with that. Having Mac in my life completes me. I know I will be blissfully happy for the next 50 years if she is by my side, even if we never bounce grandchildren on our knees. However, while she has never admitted it, I don’t know that she feels the same.

She says she’s happy, she says she has everything she wants – a good man, a great career, and lots of comfortable shoes. I may not be a saint, but I try my damnedest to be the good man that will make her happy. The coin toss led her to a new and rewarding career – and with a twist of fate one for me as well at COMNAVAIRPAC in San Diego. And I do all I can to supply her with the shoes – I even have learned that when Mac gushes about the latest from Jimmy Choo and Manolo Blahnik she’s referring to designer shoes and not the latest American Idol contestants.

She may have the three things she’s ever wanted, but she doesn’t have everything she needs.

At times, I can feel a desperate longing within her that I haven’t been able to fill. I see the sorrow reflected in her eyes whenever she sees a pregnant woman. Shopping in the mall, she’ll go out of her way to avoid walking through the infant department. And then there are those damn diaper commercials with the cute, snuggling babies. She tries valiantly to hide it, but I see her blink away the tears before quickly changing the channel. She doesn’t think I catch on, but I have made a study of Sarah MacKenzie. Even without the lip thing, I learned years ago how to tell when she is hiding something from me.

We tried fertility treatments, but after six months of a negative sign every time she peed on those stupid sticks, Mac put an abrupt end to the treatments. Having scheduled sex on demand to coincide with the clock and the calendar is not terribly romantic, but I would’ve continued in a heartbeat if it meant making Mac happy. When I suggested we try a little longer or perhaps look into adoption or other options she refused, stating emphatically that she was happy with our life just as it was. If only I believed her.

I try to tell myself that I’m being irrational, but I’m afraid her grief over not conceiving will eventually drive a wedge between us. That it’ll only be a matter of time before she leaves. After all, I’m the one who hasn’t been able to keep my promise to her. I know she has abandonment issues, but I have a few of my own. No woman has ever stayed in my life. They always have been the one to leave. I sometimes feel as if I’ve been holding my breath for 12 months waiting for one of those comfortable shoes to drop.

My fear of a distance growing between Mac and me is only compounded by our crazy work schedules that seem to conspire to keep us apart much more than is healthy for any marriage. Many days we barely see each other. In fact, I think I saw more of Mac when she was my partner at JAG. Tonight is one of far too many when one of us has gone to bed without the other. Each of us diving into a new career has led to countless late nights and work-related trips away from home and from each other.

Tossing away her pillow, I rise to go coax her away from work and join me in bed. I’m sure we could find much more enticing things to do. As I approach our office, I hear bits of a one-sided conversation. Only one person calls her cell at this time of night – Chloe Madison. When Chloe’s father was transferred to Pearl, you could practically hear her screech of joy all the way from Vermont. She’s now a pre-med student at the University of Hawaii.

My hand on the knob of the closed door, I hesitate in shock as I hear Mac’s end of the conversation confirm the very fears I had just been harboring. Nothing else registers after I hear the love of my life, the one I can’t live without, question, “When do we have time to be happy?” Hearing that proverbial shoe drop, I numbly back away, wondering how I’ll survive when she voices her unhappiness to me, when she tells me that what we have isn’t enough for her.

I find myself back in our bedroom staring unseeingly out the window. Her words ricochet around my head and the breath I felt I was holding all this time now seems to have a stranglehold on my throat.

I don’t know if it’s been minutes or hours later when she enters our room, coming up behind me to circle my waist with her slender arms, resting her head against my back.

“Hey Harm, what are you still doing up? I’m sorry I’m so late – I was just finishing up when Chloe called with the latest drama of her life.”

I blinked away the moisture in my eyes before turning around in her arms, not quite meeting her gaze. There wasn’t a hint of the unhappiness that she had confessed to Chloe in her expression. How long has she been masking her discontent? After nine years of anticipation, is marriage to me just not what she expected? While I dread hearing the answers, I feel strangely compelled to ask the questions. Even in this, even if it rips out my heart and shatters my life, the quest for the truth drives me.

Quietly I ask, “Why didn’t you tell me, Mac?”

I see the confusion in her eyes change to concern as she recognizes the anguish in my own. “Harm? What’s wrong? Why didn’t I tell you what? Are you talking about Chloe?”

“I’m talking about what you said to Chloe. I heard you, Mac. I just wish you would have talked to me.”

Her voice rises with worry. I imagine it’s because she doesn’t want this to be the way I find out her true feelings. “What are you talking about, Harm? What did you hear me say?”

Failing to keep the bitterness from my voice, I paraphrase her confession. “That you weren’t happy in our marriage.”

“Harm! I never said that! Where would you get such a crazy idea?” The indignation in her tone suddenly changes to understanding. “Wait, did you hear me say to Chloe ‘when do we have time to be happy?’”

My one word response affirms that that is exactly what I heard.

She shakes her head as if she’s totally exasperated with me. I’m well-acquainted with that expression. “Well obviously you didn’t hear the entire conversation. Did you hear what I said next?”

“That’s all I needed to hear, Mac.”

“Not very good investigative techniques, Counselor. What you missed was Chloe bemoaning the fact that she’s so busy with school, she feels she doesn’t have time for her boyfriend. She asked how I managed with such a consuming career to make time for happiness with you. What you overheard, Mr. Eavesdropper, was me responding with a rhetorical question. When I said to her, ‘How do we have time to be happy?’ I continued by telling her, ‘We don't have to find time. We just are.’”

Sheepishly I smile slightly. “Oh. I guess I didn’t hear that part.”

Returning my smile she gives me a little shake. “No, I guess you didn’t.”

But the worry that had plagued me earlier resurfaces. My hands now on her waist, I push back a little to search her eyes. “But are you, Mac? Are you truly happy?”

“Of course I am Harm. I love you and our life together. It’s more than I’ve ever dreamed.”

Pressing on, I have to ask, “But is it enough for you, Mac? Am I enough? What if we never have a baby? Will you still be happy?”

She pauses, her gaze dropping to the floor. As she raises her eyes to once again meet mine, I don’t see the tears I expect to see. She hesitates before answering, I can see she's working out her thoughts to formulate a response. “It may not make sense, but I am incredibly happy - even though there’s part of me that wishes for a baby. That desire doesn’t take away from the happiness I have with you, Harm. Let me ask you, when you think of your father, do you still wish he had been found alive? Do you still feel as if you’ve missed out on something?”

“Well, of course, but…”

Interrupting she continues, “But are you still happy in our marriage?”

Pulling her closer, I squeeze her waist in reassurance. “Absolutely, Mac. I can’t imagine being happier.”

“Well, that’s how it is for me, Harm.”

“I just wish I could give you a baby, Mac.” Softly, I question, “Don't you really want that? You know, maybe we should continue with fertility treatments.”

“Harm, I’m not ready to go through that again. It’s not just the expense, or the medication, or the shots I have to give myself. It’s not even the disappointment each month when it doesn’t happen. I didn’t like what it was doing to us. It was consuming our marriage. I hated having to schedule our sex life as if it was an appointment. Having doctors tell us when and when not to make love. I never said anything to you, but I grew to dread the week we were supposed to try to make a baby. How backwards is that? I just want us to have what we had during the first couple months of our marriage – before we became obsessed with trying for a baby. Making love whenever we want - just to make love - without thinking about conceiving.”

“Mac, if you still want a baby, we could still consider adoption. I know you would love any child.”

“Maybe someday, Harm. But it isn’t just being a parent. I want to have a baby with you. I want a child created out of our love – that is part of each of us. I want to feel that baby growing inside of me and have you be able to feel your child kick. I still would like to have all that, but if I had to choose between having a baby and having you, there wouldn’t be a choice. You are all I want and all I need, Harm.”

Hesitating, she continues, “But maybe I should ask you what you asked me.” Her voice is laced with insecurity as she asks me, “Am I enough for you? What if I can never give you the baby you want?”

“Mac, having a baby would be wonderful. But having you in my life, having the love we share – there’s nothing I want more. I told you once what I want most is to never lose you and that will never change.” Lowering my mouth to hers, I whisper against her soft lips. “All I need is you. Forever.”

Our bodies mold together as I lose myself in the delight of kissing my wife. Soon we are skin to skin as we begin the journey that I know will never grow old to me. As I explore the curves and soft places of her body, what is familiar is somehow new again. The sensations, the intimate connection is different – more intense, powerful, freeing. I pause, overwhelmed with a flood of emotion. My eyes lock with hers and from the wonder I see in her gaze I know she feels it, too. In the unity that has always been uniquely ours, there is a greater oneness than we have ever experienced. As I love her with all I have and soak up her murmurs of delight and love, I finally believe that she is truly happy with me and that we will be together forever. The tightness around my heart loosens as the breath I’ve seemingly held for months escapes in a sigh of release and love. Pulling her close, I smile, knowing that the utter contentment I feel she shares as well. Perhaps a baby is in our future - I hope it is. But one thing I’m now confident of is that we don’t need a baby or anything else to make us happy. We just are.

The End