“There’s always got to be a first time,” Pauline said.
“And what if it wasn’t a spontaneous reattachment?” Obie put in. “What if you just fucked up and didn’t do the operation right? Isn’t that a possibility?”
“Absolutely not!” Renter said, clearly offended by the very suggestion. “It is a simple operation that I perform ten or more times per week. Yours was no different than any other.”
“So you say, Doc,” Obie said.
“Look,” Renter said. “I performed that vasectomy on you nearly five years ago. Six weeks post-surgery you submitted a sperm sample to the lab that showed zero sperm. Not a few, not one, but zero. The sample was clear. If I had botched your surgery somehow, there would not have been a zero sample. Does that make sense?”
“Well ... yeah,” Obie had to admit.
“And—excuse me for getting too personal here—but how many women have you slept with without protection since I gave you the all clear to go after you submitted that sample?”
Obie looked up at the ceiling for a moment, pondering that, and then said: “Well ... quite a few, I guess.”
“Quite a few?” Renter said. “How many is that?”
“Fifty or sixty maybe,” he said. “Those are just the ones I did without rubbers, of course. The bunnies out on the road I always used protection with—diseases, you know.”
“Fifty or sixty?” Renter said, astonished. “In five years? Really?”
“I’m slowing down as I get older,” Obie said, shame in his eyes. “Anyway, you were trying to make a point?”
“Oh ... right,” Renter said, still pondering fifty or sixty. “Anyway, my point is, did any of those women turn up pregnant?”
“Not as far as I know,” Obie said.
“Don’t you think that if you were firing live rounds all this time that at least one of them would have?”
“Yeah ... I suppose,” Obie had to admit.
“Look, Doctor,” Pauline said. “I’m pretty good at reading between the lines here. I know what you’re trying to imply. I will agree that the most likely scenario from your point of view, and maybe even Obie’s, is that I was fucking someone else and got myself knocked up. I get that. I’m also here to tell you, however, that I have not been fucking anyone else and this baby growing inside of me was put there by Obie. There is no other explanation. Now, how about we stop talking about this and stop pointing fingers of innuendo here and check this thing out. It’s a relatively simple test, right?”
“Well ... yes,” Renter said. “I’ll send you home with a specimen cup and you’ll just need to submit a sperm sample to our lab. Now, it’s important that you bring the sample back here within...”
“Fuck that shit,” Obie said. “I’m giving you the sample right now and we’re going to run this test while we wait.”
“Uh ... that’s not how we really do things,” Renter said. “I know that the popular media likes to portray such a thing as taking place in a medical office’s bathroom, but in actuality...”
“Well, today life is going to imitate art,” Obie cut in. “Go get me the cup and point me to the bathroom. It won’t take long.”
“But...”
“No buts,” Obie said. “We’re doing this thing. If you got anything like a Penthouse or a Playboy laying around, it’ll make the job easier.”
“We have no such magazines in this office!” Renter assured him.
“Oh ... well, how about a medical book with pictures of naked women in it? Anything like that?”
“Really, Obie, I must insist...”
“You don’t need a magazine,” Pauline said. “I’ll give you a hand.”
Obie smiled and pointed his finger at her in appreciation. “Give me a hand,” he said, chuckling. “That’s good, darlin’.”
“Isn’t it?” Pauline said. She turned to the doctor. “Now then, the cup?”
He gave them the cup and they went into the patient restroom together, scandalizing the staff quite visibly. They made no noise in there but when they emerged ten minutes later, Obie held a specimen cup in his hands. “I’m gonna have to write this one down in my journal,” he said, handing the cup to Renter.
“It’s a first for me as well,” Pauline said.
Flustered, Renter took the cup and a written lab order and disappeared out the office door. Pauline and Obie went back to his office and sat down. Three minutes later, Renter returned.
“How long will this take, Doc?” Obie asked him.
“Not very long,” Renter said. “I had them run it stat and let them know we needed the results as soon as possible.”
“So ... an hour, two hours? What are we talking?”
“Ten or fifteen minutes at the most.”
Obie nodded his head in appreciation. “Now that’s service,” he said.
It actually took twelve. The phone rang and Renter answered it. He listened for a moment, jotted something down on a piece of paper, and then thanked the person on the other end of the line. He hung up the phone and looked at the singer.
“Well?” Obie asked.
“There are viable sperm in the sample,” he said simply.
Obie let out a sharp breath. Pauline looked at him. “I told you so,” she said.
“You did,” he agreed.
“It’s a very low count,” Renter said. “The average ejaculate for someone your age contains around forty to a hundred million sperm per milliliter. Under fifteen million is considered to be a low sperm count that might hamper conception. You’re firing eight million per milliliter, but they’re fully motile, which means they’re moving around just like sperm should.”
“What does that all mean?” Obie asked. “Are you still trying to say that I didn’t knock Pauline up?”
“No, I’m inclined to believe that you did,” Renter said. “It just wasn’t very likely. With a count of eight million, you’re almost considered infertile.”
“It only takes one though, right?” Pauline said.
“Well, it only takes one to get through,” Renter said, “but the odds are against any one particular sperm. Once you get much below fifteen million, the odds of any one achieving penetration of an ovum outweigh the number of sperm present. You see, the woman’s body attacks the sperm as they’re making their journey, and not all sperm are capable of penetration of the ovum, and then there’s the whole matter of timing with egg release. They can fight their way forward like hoards of German soldiers trying to attack Stalingrad, but if there’s no egg in position it’s all for nothing.”
“But one did get through, it seems.”
“So it seems,” Renter said.
“How does something like this happen?” Obie asked. “Are we talking spontaneous reattachment here, or medical malpractice?”
“It is almost certainly what we call a recanalization of one of the vas deferens,” Renter said. “The low sperm count suggests that quite strongly.”
“What does that mean?” Pauline asked.
“It’s not a reattachment as you are thinking of it,” he said. “The ends of the vas that I cut and tied off did not grow back together. Instead, what probably happened is that granulation took place from the sperm leaking out of the proximal end of one of the vas—that’s the end that leads from where the spermatozoa are formed. Over time, through a mechanism that is very rare and something that we don’t quite understand, those sperm accumulate and can form a channel of sorts. This channel, if it happens to connect with the distal end of the vas deferens—that’s the end that leads to the prostate and the urinary tract ultimately—viable sperm can work their way through and into the ejaculate.”