Chapter 2: You Would Do That?
Monica had a hand to her mouth in astonishment, trying to hold in a gasp. "What did you say?" She breathed, her voice not even above a whisper. In her eyes was a hardly-daring-to-believe it expression of awe. Bewilderment.
"You heard me," Chandler nodded. "What would I have to do?" He awkwardly shuffled his hands in the pockets of his bathrobe.
A beat as Monica gazed at him, stunned. Then she burst into laughter again. "Good one, Chandler!" She wagged her finger at him. "That has to be one of the biggest jokes you've ever…."
"I wasn't joking," Chandler cut across her, quietly and firmly.
Monica continued to stare at him, gobsmacked, until, when it finally became too much, she glanced away. "Why…. What would make you think I would even consider….?"
"Oh, let's see: how about the sperm donor application on your kitchen table? Or are you screening him to be the Guinea pig that starts your new harem?" Chandler flung out with his usual sarcasm.
The biting jab was hardly helpful in his quest to convince her how serious he really was, and even less helpful as Monica's eyes bulged upon realizing: "You were snooping through my files?!" In the little bit of moonlight reaching here into the hallway, she had now gone translucent, though some color of outrage was beginning to fight its way back onto her cheeks, leaving her face a kind of rosy pink. Chandler would have thought she was blushing, if not for her scowl. "That's private, Chandler! How…. How dare you….!"
"I wasn't trying to snoop!" Chandler stammered out quickly. "You left a glass and coaster out and I saw the document while I was putting those away! It's… it's not like there's anything to be ashamed of, Mon. There's…. There's no judgment here!" He lifted his hands shoulder height in surrender.
Across from him, Monica's features were softening, though not quickly enough. Chandler cracked a hopeful smile. "Besides, you'd probably get enough judgment from Ross, anyway, if he knew."
"I didn't want anyone to know!" Monica cried. "Not until I had come to a decision. I'm not even sure if I'm going to go through with it!" She poked a finger in Chandler's chest. "You may not be judging me, Chandler Bing, but if this is your way of…. Making fun of me…."
"No! Why would I….?"
She rounded on him, arms folded. "Are you trying to sleep with me?" She demanded, hotly.
"No!" Chandler felt an odd sort of spasm go through him, fearing that, in his denial, he had insulted her and was thereby digging his hole deeper. "I…. I just want to help." He looked at her beseechingly. "After tonight, at the hospital…. And you were so sad…."
Monica peered at him, probing deep into his eyes. She gasped. "Oh, my God…. You're…. You're actually serious…."
"As a heart attack," Chandler told her.
"You…. you would do that? For me?"
"Yes. I would do anything for you, Mon. You know that."
Even as she knew he spoke true, she was finding it difficult to look at him. On the one hand, she wanted to throw her arms around him and thank him. On the other…. This was Chandler. Was she really so desperate to become a mommy that she would turn to her best friend to donate his swimmers for the doctors to then shoot her up with, in the hopes that it might create a baby? A baby that, if she used Chandler's sperm, would be part Chandler's? Chandler hated kids! Now he was ready to take such an irresponsible shot in the dark in an attempt to knock her up? Not literally in the old fashioned way, of course, but….
"Mon, wouldn't it be better to have the kid of someone you know, than of some random stranger who you don't?" Chandler was asking. "When you picture your baby's father, would you rather see a face or just a number?"
Monica glanced away. "Better to not know him beyond a number than to see my baby's features staring back at me from some man." She started to pull the door to. "Chandler….. it's….it's very sweet, but I…. I don't need your help. I wasn't going to even accept the application anyway…."
"Monica….!" But she closed the door before Chandler could stop her.
Sixteen Months Later
"OK! Sperm Donor #03815! Come on down!"
Chandler jerked sharply from over at the kitchen table when he heard Monica's chipper voice. He was busy watching Joey trying and failing to properly eat a jar of jam that the beautiful chef had brewed homemade. He now felt his stomach roil with an odd feeling of nerves at hearing Monica bring up sperm donors for the first time in over a year. By now, he had almost forgotten about the rambling offer he had babbled to her in the wee hours of the morning after her nephew had been born. He had assumed, in her never bringing it up again and also in her very clear state of non-pregnancy, that she had too.
…. He hoped this didn't have anything to do with Richard. That her grieving the loss of her relationship was driving her to make irrational, impulsive, un-Monica decisions. Monica never did anything out of desperation, nor should she. She was more than that, far above that. Besides, being desperate, especially in matters of love, was his job. Chandler had every reason to be desperate. Whereas, with her confidence, her brightness, her beauty, Monica had no reason to be desperate. Shit, she had gotten one of her father's friends, a man old enough to be her father, to go 'Ah-OOOO-ga!' And boink her between the sheets with all the randyness of a cartoon character. Or a really, really horny teenage boy. While Richard didn't exactly look the part of a teenage boy, he had certainly acted like one by going to bed with a woman he had apparently known when she was in diapers.
Chandler shook his head, trying to ignore Monica flitting over to Rachel and Ross on the couch.
"OK: 6'2", 170 pounds and he describes himself as a male Geena Davis!"
Oh, crap….. Must… not…. Make a joke….
"So there's more than one of us?" Chandler smiled at Monica casting a pointed look at him over her shoulder.
"You can't do this, Mon!" Ross was moaning. "If you do this, I'm… I'm gonna…."
"You're gonna what?"
"I'm gonna…. Tell Mom…" Ross trailed off lamely.
"Honey, he's right; I'm sorry. I love you, but you're crazy…" Rachel murmured.
"What? Why? Why is this crazy?" Monica demanded. "So this isn't the ideal way to do something…"
"Oh, so it's not the ideal…?"
"Lips moving, still talking!" Monica cut off her brother schoolmarmishly. "I mean, it may not be ideal, but… I'm so ready! I… I see the way Ben looks at you. It… it makes me ache! You know?"
Joey ruined the moment by crowing about his ability to make jam crackers, which to Chandler appeared to be nothing more than a graham cracker with jam smeared on it. It was too clever by half.
"OK. All right - how's this?: 27. Italian American guy…" Monica read off, Ross nodding along. "He's… an actor. Born in Queens. Wow! - Big family! Seven sisters…. And he's the only…. Boy…." The Geller siblings' faces both fell with realization as they rounded on Joey, who was still happily nibbling on his jam crackers, in disbelief. "Oh my God - under personal comments: New York Knicks Rule!"
"Heck yeah the Knicks rule!" Joey crowed.
"Joey!" Monica whined, blushing. "This is you!"
"Lemme see…" Joey got up and rounded the table, reaching for the paper with his arm that wasn't in a sling. After a quick scan, his face lit up. "Oh, yeah!"
"When did you go to a sperm bank?" Rachel inquired, sounding as though she feared the answer.
"Well, right after I did that sex study, down at NYU. Hey, remember that sweater I got you for your birthday?" He turned to Chandler.
"And that's how you bought it?" Chandler squeaked, not wanting to think of his best buddy using blood money he'd gotten from jacking off to go on a shopping spree for his birthday.
"No…. That's what I was wearing when I donated!" All of Joey's friends studied him in horror; face buried in his file, he didn't notice. "I'm kinda surprised there's any of my boys left…"
"Oh, honey, it's pretty competitive," Monica explained. "I mean, I've got an actual rocket scientist here!"
"Hey, maybe I should call this place and get them to put my Days of Our Lives gig on here. Huh? Juice this puppy up a little!"
Chandler barely refrained from rolling his eyes. Monica sent the boys a hopeless smile and shook her head.
"Circular file, Joey. Sorry."
"What?" Joey bawled, even as Chandler half-dragged him out of the apartment. "Do you have any idea how beautiful any kids of ours would be? With my Italianness and your…. Whatever-ness?" Monica just snorted and shook her head again, failing to hide her smile.
Chandler and Joey stumbled back into their apartment, the latter looking a little put out by Monica's rejection. For his part, Chandler felt strangely annoyed that Joey would have put in a sperm donor application to give Monica a baby. An almost possessive jealousy was bubbling up inside him, and he clenched the donor application in his fist.
The donor application….
Letting go of Joey, he rounded the kitchen island and sat down on a stool, smoothing out the piece of paper along the formica.
"Say, uh, Joey…?" He called over his shoulder. "You would tell me if you were actually enough of an idiot to hand this to Monica, would you?"
"Of course I didn't hand it to her!" Joey huffed. "Otherwise, she would have already known it was me when she read it!"
Chandler chewed on his bottom lip. "So…. She was given a batch of these?"
"How should I know?" Joey whined. "Either that, or she selected the applications herself, from a larger pool the sperm bank gave her."
It was crazy. The idea was absolute madness. Being the kind of numbers guy he was, Chandler wasn't even sure how great the odds were that it would end up in a pile given to Monica from which she could make a smaller selection, if she even selected it at all.
He stood up, before he lost his nerve. "I'm gonna need to use our fax scanner for a minute."
"What for?" Joey pondered him quizzically. Then he saw Chandler marching towards the fax machine, with his, Joey's, sperm donor profile still in his hands. Joey blanched. "Chandler….? What are you doing…?"
"I just need to send a document," Chandler replied, evasively.
"Not that document, I hope!" Joey pointed. "And you better not be sending it to Estelle!"
Now Chandler did roll his eyes. "I'm not sending a read-out of your sperm count to your agent." A beat, and then: "Unless, you want to sleep with her and be totally up front about your performance."
"Who are you sending it to, then?" Joey wanted to know, following him into the back room.
Chandler flushed. "My computer. I… I wanna see what kind of table template this form used. Might be helpful at work."
It was a total lie, and honestly Chandler was astounded by his own ability to come up with something even that halfway plausible. For all his denseness, however, there was no fooling Joey, who now attempted to tackle Chandler to get the sperm donor profile back. Even though it was technically Joey's file, Chandler fought him off, kicking his roommate away before diving to the fax scanner and feeding the document into the machine. He just finished tapping in his number before Joey was back on him again.
The document scanned.
Chandler and Joey shared a look. What followed was a mad dash to Chandler's laptop, which the former barely managed to win. Joey chased Chandler into his room, but not fast enough before the door slammed in the struggling actor's face.
Ignoring how Joey was pounding on the door, Chandler pulled up the digitized copy of Joey's donor profile. His fingers flew over the keys, heart pounding as he hoped Joey wouldn't, when he realized the door was locked, go running to Monica and babble some half-cocked theory about what Chandler was doing.
It took some tech wizardry, but Chandler finally managed to get Joey's handwritten responses into text boxes, then erase the text inside the text boxes until the file had been scrubbed blank to look like a whole new form.
Chandler smiled. Saving a copy of the new, empty form, he pressed PRINT.
There was a CRASH as Joey hurled his full weight into the door and bashed his way into Chandler's room, causing the data analyst to jump and nearly scream. It was a wonder the door didn't go off its hinges. Seizing a pencil, Chandler threatened Joey with it until the struggling actor backed up, not wanting to get jabbed in the eye during a tussle over a piece of paper. Returning to his desk, Chandler began to fill out the printed, empty form.
"Why…. Why couldn't you have just used white-out?" Joey moaned.
"Too obvious," Chandler quipped. He tensed covetously over his paper as he felt Joey draw near.
"If…. If she was able to recognize me from just my profile, what makes you think she won't recognize you from yours?" Joey stammered, sounding leery, even frightened.
"Because, unlike you, I'm not Captain fucking Obvious!"
"So you're going to lie on the profile?" Joey asked, appalled.
Chandler felled him with a pointed look. "You lie on your resumé!"
"…. Touché." There was a long pause. "Chandler…. Why are you doing this?"
Chandler lifted his head from the paper, staring ahead in thought. "…. Because Monica needs a baby. She wants one so badly. And if you were willing to be such a good friend as to donate your sperm, why can't I be one too?"
"You can't be a sperm!" Joey blinked. At Chandler's dirty look, he nodded. "You meant be a good friend." A pause. "Yeah, well, a good friend would have asked her if she wanted to use his sperm!" Joey pointed out hotly. "Mine just ended up in that bank because of the study I participated in! It's not like I planned for Mon to even select my file. But you…."
Chandler ignored him as he scanned his completed form for any mistakes. "Wait. Shit! I need a profile number."
Joey lunged for him, possibly thinking that Chandler was going to…. "You can't just make one up! You take a little ticket stub with a number out of this slot at the front desk and that's how they assign it! Then you hand the stub to the cute receptionist lady, and she stamps it on the form herself!"
Chandler nodded, rising with firm decision, the paper clutched in his hand. "We're going to the sperm bank then. I'll need you to give me directions."
"Wait," Joey growled out, his voice hard; there was an edge to it. "You have to let Monica know."
"Why? How's she even going to…? If she drew yours almost at random, how is there any chance she would draw mine?" Chandler tried to slough off.
"Then you need to at least warn her. That you're donating. Or else, offer your sperm to her or ask for her permission!"
"I did!" Chandler said quickly, which was the truth.
"You did? When?" Joey demanded, his eyes bulging.
"Over a year ago, the night Ben was born!"
Joey blinked. "And what did she say?"
Chandler thought fast. "She said she'd think about it."
Joey studied him hard, then sighed before marching to the door of their apartment. Chandler followed behind warily.
He had technically told Joey the truth, about the conversation he and Monica had had.
Except for the last part. That had been a lie.