“That’s it,” I told Helen. “We actually did it.”
She gave me this proud smile, but something in her eyes just seemed off, almost like she was already practicing what to say if the bottom ever fell out of our lives.
A couple of weeks later, I was sitting in a boring clinic room for what I figured was just a routine prostate check. The doc glanced over my chart, checked the lab numbers in his folder, and looked up at me.
“Tom,” he asked, “do you have any biological kids?”
I let out a laugh. “Six of them. Four boys, two girls. I’ve got a mountain of tuition bills to prove it.”
He didn’t even crack a smile. “You were born with a rare genetic condition. You’ve never produced any viable sperm. It’s from birth. Not a low count. Just completely impossible.”
The room suddenly felt tiny. My tongue went completely numb. I honestly couldn’t even remember how to stand up like a man who was in charge of his own life.
I built my contracting business using the exact same mindset I used for everything else. If a problem popped up, I fixed it. If we needed something, I worked my hands to the bone until we had it.
