Solomon's Knife

by Victor Koman

  "

  Their steps rang in Valerie's ears like hammers chiseling at glass. She and the doctor walked slowly down the corridors of the medical center, Landry behind them with the blood, pass-ing scores of patients of all ages: the aged, tired ones in Geri-atrics; the bright, struggling ones in Pediatrics; the invisible crying voices in the postpartum section; and, finally, a section of near silence.

  "Infant ICU," Landry said. He watched Valerie for her reac-tion as she stepped warily toward a large plate-glass window.

  Inside the ICU stood a man and a woman bent over an in-strument-laden crib, their backs to the window. The woman's straight dark hair reached down below her shoulders to flip under in the last inch or two. She wore a violet satin robe with matching terry slippers that were expensive enough not to look unfashionable. She shook a rattle over the bubble top of the crib.

  The blond-headed man next to her was swaddled in hospi-tal garb beneath which lay grey pants with cargo pockets and a soft green polo shirt. He leaned over the isolation crib, a bright yellow rubber duck in his hand. He squeezed it a couple of times, then let his hand fall to his side. The gesture of weakening hope caused Valerie's throat to tighten. She swallowed, then stepped to the far end of the win-dow for a view of the baby.

  Through the window and Plexiglas she saw a tiny waxen figure. It wasn't pink the way a baby should be. It didn't move and kick the way a baby should. She had seen enough babies in the park just the other week to know what a healthy one did with its time.

  "Stay here," Fletcher said to Valerie and Landry, taking the blood bag from the technologist. The woman at cribside looked up when Fletcher entered. She said something to Evelyn as the doctor set up the IV. Then she chanced to glance at the window. Her gaze riveted Valerie's. Valerie lowered her eyes. The look felt as if it had been one of recognition. It wasn't the look one would give a stranger who was helping to save a daughter's life.

  Dr. Fletcher, through the glove box, lifted Renata up in the chamber for a moment to change her diaper. Even from the distance of several feet, Valerie saw the blond hair and blue-grey eyes. She felt something tighten in her stomach, something else go cold and black in her head. The room tilted dangerously sideways. Reaching out for something to grasp, she touched Landry's wiry arms. They steadied her, guided her away from the room, away from the child.

  He helped her to the cafeteria, where he bought her a large orange juice and a slice of chocolate cake. Pointing out that she needed to replenish her blood-sugar levels, he encour-aged the stunned woman to eat. After she had finished in me-chanical silence, he asked, "Was that your daughter?"

  "It's impossible," she said, her voice dull and flat. "I had an abortion."

  "You had your abortion the same date and hour that Mrs. Chandler had her fertility operation." Landry leaned forward across the table, whispering with conspiratorial intensity. "Your room was right next to hers. Dr. Fletcher performed both op-erations. She gave Mrs. Chandler your baby."

  "It's impossible," she repeated with weary insistence. "I had an abortion." Landry kept at her. "They transferred the embryo from you to Karen Chandler. You didn't want to be pregnant. Mrs. Chan-dler did. Dr. Fletcher has been performing non-surgical ovum transfer for years. That's where you impregnate a donor woman with a husband's sperm, flush out the fertilized ovum before it's had a chance to attach to her uterus, and place it in the wife's uterus where it implants itself. So the wife's preg-nant with a baby that is her husband's but not hers."

  "They do that?" Valerie only spoke out of some dimly sensed social reflex that insisted she keep up her end of the conver-sation. She stared down at the bottom of the orange juice glass.

  "They've been doing it for years. But I can see that Dr. Fletcher has gone way, way beyond ovum transfer. Into the postimplantation stage, long after the five-day preimplanta-tion period allowed by non-surg-"

  He reached out to seize Valerie's arm. Her pale head tilted toward the table. Fumbling in his pocket for smelling salts, he eventually found a popper and broke it under her nose. Other concerned staffers charged toward her, each reach-ing out with an ampule of ammonia salts or amyl nitrate.

  "It's all right," Landry said. "First-time blood donor." At that, everyone nodded and returned to their tables, some laughing with relief. Nothing worse than for a visitor to code on them in the middle of lunch.

  Her eyes jerked open, her body recoiling at the sharp scent of the salts. The swimming blackish swirl was wrenched from her with unsettling swiftness. Mark put the acrid capsule in the stamped aluminum ashtray between them.

  "There," he said. "All better." He gazed at her for a few mo-ments, deciding on what he should do. Finally, he asked, "Would you excuse me for a minute?"

  Valerie nodded. Landry headed for the hospital phone. Valerie resumed her meditation on the bottom of the glass. An avalanche of thought and emotion coursed through her. It has to be true, she thought. Nothing else makes sense. Noth-ing else explains everything. She gave no thought to the how of it all. She knew nothing of surgery or medical science. If someone had told her before that such an operation were impossible, she would have prob-ably agreed without thinking about it. Now, told that it was quite possible, she just as readily believed it with as little thought. Medicine was magic to her, an arcane, occult art that merely existed, causelessly, in a world where so many aspects of technology seemed simply to be there when most needed. Or when least wanted. The how did not matter. What mattered most to Valerie was the why. Why do that? Why take my baby? The baby is mine. She doesn't look anything like her parents. She must be mine. The thoughts cascaded over and over. Why take my baby when there are donor mothers all over? When there are other ways? Why do something so complicated, so risky, when there must have been safer ways? Open ways, legal ways.

  She was certain that what Dr. Fletcher did must be illegal. Why else would she hide it? A cold anger gestated within her soul.

  "Valerie?"

  She looked up. Dr. Fletcher towered over her. She stared, speechless, as the woman sat across from her in the same seat in which the medical technologist had moments ago exposed the doctor's crime.

  "I'd like to talk to you," Fletcher said, "about the possibility of a bone-marrow transplant, if that would be all right."

  Valerie said nothing for a moment, then asked, "What hap-pens to fetuses after they're aborted?" The question caught Fletcher off guard. It took her a mo-ment to compose her thoughts. "That's not a pleasant topic even for doctors to discuss."

  "Try me."

  "Well," she said, striving for as neutral and sympathetic a tone as possible, "some hospitals just dispose of the fetuses along with the other bits and pieces they normally remove during operations. Some pathology departments catalogue and preserve the interesting ones. Some incinerate them, some bury them. Some use parts of the fetus, such as the liver, pan-creas, and brain tissue, in research and treatment of other patients. There are ethical review boards that-"

  "What happened to my baby?"

  Fletcher gazed intently at Valerie. The young woman stared resolutely at the tabletop.

  "It was cremated."

  Valerie's voice nearly exploded. "That's a goddamned lie."

  People at the other tables turned to stare with the eager cu-riosity of co-workers watching an assault on one of their less loved number.

  Evelyn knew that what she said in the next second and how she said it would either create the worst enemy she could ever have or soften the shock enough for her to understand.

  "Yes, Valerie," she said softly. "Renata was once yours." Valerie slammed her fist against the table. A shuddering sob escaped from her. Gazing around at the gawking onlookers, Evelyn tried to quiet her. "Please, Valerie. Come to my office and I'll explain everything. It's not what you thi-"

  "I came in for an abortion," she shouted, "and you stole my baby!" Everyone in the room fell silent and turned to watch in alarm. "Some sort of monstrous experiment! How could you think you'd get away with it?"

&nbs
p; Evelyn reached out to Valerie. The door to the cafeteria opened. In the doorway stood a tall man with silver-grey hair. His ruddy face set in an angry glower, he spoke with loud au-thority.

  "Doctor Fletcher."

  Fletcher spun about to face Jacob Lawrence, the hospital administrator. Behind him stood Mark Landry.

  "Would you mind," Lawrence said, "coming up to my of-fice?" For a moment, sick panic showed in Fletcher's face, followed by a hardening resolve. She stiffly turned to Valerie.

  "Thank you, Ms. Dalton. You may go home now. You've done quite enough for today." She followed a silent Lawrence through the doors, leaving Valerie alone in a circle of curious nurses, residents, and miscellaneous employees and visitors.

  "What was that all about?" asked one nurse, staring coolly at Valerie.

  "I knew that old biddy was up to something," said another.

  "What do you mean, stole your baby?"

  Valerie shook her head and started to push her way through the knot of inquisitors. Still dizzy from being low on blood, she could think of nothing but escape. Half running, she broke out of the cafeteria into the main corridor. Not knowing where to turn, she headed toward the light streaming in through the windows, found an exit leading to sunshine, and made her way to the parking lot. In a daze, she walked along aisles of cars until she found her disturbingly cheerful yellow Porsche. She climbed in, slammed and locked the door. Safety. She took a dozen long, slow breaths that were more sobs than anything else. A feel-ing of terror enveloped her. She started the car and drove away at a reckless velocity. "

  Valerie locked the front door and collapsed in the bedroom. It was too much to take in at once. Her baby was alive. She belonged to someone else. And she was dying.

  Valerie had faced the guilt of an abortion last winter, only to face a new life-or-death choice again. That her actions had led to the death of an unborn child had been a terrible burden. Now, when she should have been overjoyed that the child was alive, she felt a horrifying fear that the mortal choice would have to be made all over again.

  The terror, she realized with a shudder, was for herself, not for the baby. She buried her face in the depths of the down pillow and began to cry. For herself. And for what she knew that meant about her. The tears soaked the pillowcase with each trembling sobs. She kicked her shoes off and pulled the comforter over her. Drawing her knees up to her chest, she wept while the same thought throbbed in her feverishly: Jennifer's alive.

  If it had been a girl, she would have called it Jennifer. If it had been a boy, Bryan. Years ago, she had chosen those names for when she finally decided to have children. Since Ron wasn't the marrying sort, Jennifer Dalton and Bryan Dalton both sounded like good names. She had never understood why some mothers wanted their children to "have a name." That is, a last name other than the mother's. Dalton was a perfectly good name. Jennifer Dalton.

  Jennifer Dalton was Renata Chandler. Or was she really? Valerie's frantic mind latched on to the problem in morbid fas-cination. Who was this child, really? Whose right was it to name her? Did it have any bearing on who she really was?

  Did it have any effect on Valerie's decision whether or not to help save her life?

  A new wave of sobbing brought more tears. She pulled back for a moment to gaze at the mascara and makeup smeared onto the pillowcase.

  This isn't doing anything, she eventually determined. She sat up in bed and tried to think things through the way Ron would if he were in court.

  One, I was tricked into a medical experiment by Dr. Fletcher.

  Two, the baby I thought I'd aborted is alive with someone else.

  Three, I'm the only one that can save her life or they wouldn't have risked contacting me. Four, she's Ron's and my baby. Nothing can change that. Not a name, not a secret experiment with stolen embryos.

  Oh, my God, she thought with stunned suddenness. How many others are there?

  IX

  Dr. Jacob Lawrence sought to avoid controversy the way most men sought to avoid death. He didn't think about it much when it wasn't present, but when it seemed imminent, he marshaled every resource to combat it.

  Mentally, he tried to envision a way out of the mess caused by the woman across from his desk. To his left sat Dr. Leo Cospe, the staff neurosurgeon. To his right, leaning against the windowpane, stood Shawn Deyo, the medical center's le-gal counsel. It was time to work on damage control. He cleared his throat. "Dr. Fletcher, I don't want to be placed in the position of grand inquisitor, but your actions leave me no other choice." He gazed across his desk at Fletcher, who sat stonily in the leather chair. She stared at him coldly.

  "None of this would be happening," she said, "if the ethics committee had agreed to discuss the merits of transoption eight years ago."

  Lawrence sighed. "We'll discuss it now. I've asked Shawn and Leo to be here as a special ethics subcommittee."

  "I have nothing to say." Dr. Fletcher stared quietly into the administrator's eyes with a gaze of arctic steel.

  "It would be in your interest," Lawrence said, "to be forth-right about all this so that we can head off any publicity that may damage this institution."

  Fletcher shook her head. "You're going to get publicity no matter what I say or do. The lid's just been torn off the biggest controversy of the decade." She swiveled to look at the lawyer. "What charges have you concocted for me?"

  Deyo-a tall, husky man in a fine grey pinstripe suit-glanced at a notebook in his hand. His voice was rich and deep. "Nothing's concocted, Dr. Fletcher. By your actions you've left us with no other choice but to notify the district attorney's of-fice. Bayside cannot be perceived as an institution that con-dones illegal, clandestine experiments. Some likely charges will be performing experimental surgery without authoriza-tion. Failure to secure informed consent for same. Battery. Kidnapping. Child endangerment. Improper disposal of fetal tissue samples-"

  Fletcher's voice growled low and surly. "Renata wasn't a tis-sue sample, damn you. She was a baby." She stared at him with a strange, murderous gaze.

  "Well, if you want to go that route, they can get you on the other charges I mentioned." He leaned toward her. "But let me tell you this. The DA's going to get you on something. You ripped a baby out of a woman and sold it. And make no mis-take, that's how the newspapers will present it." Fletcher continued to gaze at him, unblinking. "I saved the life of a child who'd be dead now if not for-"

  "I suggest," Dr. Lawrence interjected sharply, "that we hold such arguments for the DA and right now just find a way to moderate the impact of all this. Surely you must see the sense in that, don't you, Evelyn?"

  Fletcher laughed. "There's no way you can moderate this. You had eight years to consider all the arguments pro and con. You waffled and fence straddled until transoption finally rose up to bite you."

  "Evelyn." Dr. Cospe spoke in level, sympathetic tones. He was smaller than Dr. Fletcher, spare and balding. He sat in the chair next to Dr. Lawrence and gazed at her calmly. "What you don't seem to understand is that such delays are an im-portant part of the ethical review process. A cooling-off time, if you will. We're dealing with a procedure that involves a high degree of morbidity and risk to the reproductive potential of two women per operation. It is obvious from your initial pro-posals that you viewed surgical embryo transfer as some sort of universal solution to the problems of both abortion and in-fertility."

  He leaned one elbow on an armrest to support the side of his head in the palm of his hand. In that position, he contin-ued.

  "That was eight years ago, as you noted. In that intervening time, such procedures as in vitro fertilization and non-surgi-cal ovum transfer have solved virtually all problems of infer-tility. The prospect of safe abortifacient drugs promises to re-solve the abortion debate."

  "It does not," Fletcher said. "It just hides the problem-"

  "May I finish?" Cospe's voice never shifted from its soft tim-bre. "All right, then. Contraceptive technology is proceeding at such a pace that unwanted pregnancies wi
ll soon be a thing of the past. Will you admit that at that point transoption will be obsolete?"

  "Mostly," Evelyn said grudgingly. "But there'll always be someone who-" Cospe raised his other hand. "Just let me finish. The reason ethics committees grapple so long with such difficult ques-tions as the right to life of a fetus or of risks of morbidity to the mother is that occasionally the passage of time will make such questions moot. You acted in haste. You chose to perform an operation that in a few years will-in all likelihood-be use-less or at least extremely rare."

  "Well," Fletcher said, lighting up a cigarette, "it's damned useful right now. And if I had done this five years ago and it had caught on, there might be a few million kids alive today who are dead now."

  "Oh, that'd be great," Deyo said from a corner of the office. "Think of the population mess we'd be in. The world's over-crowded now. Abortion may be the only thing keeping us from Malthusian disaster."

  Dr. Lawrence cleared his throat. "Do you see what over-whelming issues we've had to contend with in this?"

  "None of these considerations were in your report," Fletcher said. She blew a puff of smoke in Lawrence's direction. "You're making it all up on the spot." She turned toward Deyo. "As for overpopulation, I've heard predictions of doom every time the world added another billion. Did it ever occur to you that one of the children from those extra millions might grow up to be the genius who'll find a solution to hunger or war? How many potential Einsteins have been aborted in the last eight years?" Deyo snorted. "About as many as potential Charlie Mansons." Fletcher narrowed her eyes. "We obviously have two differ-ent views of human potential. If an abundance of people wor-ries you so much, you can always rectify the matter, starting with yourself."

  "Doctor Fletcher," said Lawrence in a strict tone. "There is no need to stoop to insult. The ethics subcommittee has no choice in this matter but to notify the district attorney imme-diately. To do otherwise would expose this institution to a se-vere liability."

  "Which we may not be able to avoid, anyway," Deyo added. "If Dr. Fletcher's criminal intent can be demonstrated-"