In this book, we meet Macy McKinney, med-school student, work at home medical transcriptionist, and single mother of five year old Haley. Macy is struggling to finish med-school, make financial ends meet, and take care of Haley, who has cancer ravaging her body, and will die without a bone marrow transplant. The bone marrow transplant can be done once a compatible donor is found, but Macy has to come up with $150,000 to pay for the transplant up front, before the hospital will do it. In the meantime, Haley is undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, battling blood infections, and stuck in the hospital.
Thad Winters, a successful ad executive, was forced to make the most difficult decision of his life after a tragic car accident, save his beloved wife Valerie, who is his life, or have doctors try to save his son, who is struggling for life inside Valerie’s failing body. Thad makes the agonizing decision to keep his wife alive, so doctors focus all of their efforts on saving her, only to lose both the baby, and Valerie in the end.
After some time goes by, Thad decides that he has no interest in ever marrying again, but feels that he does need a child to make his life complete. He comes up with this crazy scheme to hire a woman to be artificially inseminated with his sperm, and he will pay her $100,000 to turn the baby and all rights over to him at birth. After interviewing several interested parties, and finding them all lacking, he is ready to give up, when out of desperation, Macy comes walking into his office.
Macy doesn’t really relish the idea of being artificially inseminated, or of carrying a baby and then giving it up after birth, but out of desperation to save Haley, she feels she has to take this drastic step, as it could provide her with the rest of the money she needs to pay for Haley’s much needed bone marrow transplant.
Things don’t work out in the end like you may think, but I will tell you that young Haley gets her transplant, and is thriving at the end of the book. For details on the contract between Thad and Macy, you will have to actually read the story!
It is easy to criticize the things that others do, without knowing their reasons. Macy probably was criticized for agreeing to Thad’s plan, but on the other hand, those of us who have children can definitely see where she is coming from, because desperation can make us do things we normally would never dream of!
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