The Mirror Apocalypse

by John Ayang

  As she, herself, would later keep saying, it must have been the grace of God that kept following her around, and eventually helped her turn her life around and get back on track. Ironically, Barbara actually found salvation through the bad company she kept. From some of her girlfriends, she got to know about a lucrative, but likely illegal and immoral, business that was becoming popular among young ladies. She learned that she could “donate” her egg to a fertility clinic or hospital that treated infertile couples, for a good sum of money. Barbara needed money to pay her rent and feed her crack cocaine habit which she had picked up. So, she agreed to accompany her roommate, a part-time college student, who did some odd jobs on the side, to the Norfolk General Hospital for “donation,” a euphemism that was used to shield the fact that money did exchange hands in the process. As the belief went, it was only reasonable that the donor be compensated for her pains and for the things she needed throughout the duration of taking a drug regimen that would quicken her ovulation. The process was complicated, but when it was finally done and the egg was successfully retrieved via laparoscopy, it was well worth the inconvenience. Barbara found out that it was even better if one negotiated directly with a patron and the patron happened to be wealthy. Fed all this information, she decided it was worth a try. The first egg harvested from her, four weeks after the completion of her regimen, fetched her the cash amount of six thousand dollars, more money than Barbara ever had in her entire life. She quickly opened an account with Chase Bank and was ready for business. To her disappointment, however, she was not allowed to donate again for six months.

  So, six months to the minute after her first donation, Barbara was at the hospital again, but this time, she had done her homework and had found a patron who was willing to pay twelve thousand dollars, not for egg donation, but for surrogacy. Barbara still had to donate the egg, which was fertilized in the laboratory with sperm from another man. The fertilized egg was reinserted into her womb and she carried the baby to a full, nine-month term. The whole process was quite daunting, but the additional benefits that were added to the agreement made her decide to try it. She had to have weekly hospital testing for the first month. Then it was reduced to biweekly visits for two months, and then, to monthly visits. The cost for all the hospital visits and medications were paid by Barbara’s patron. Her own side of the bargain was to eat healthily to ensure that the growing fetus had proper nutrition. This was risky, as any mishap that resulted in a malformed baby meant that Barbara would forfeit the twelve thousand dollars. A healthy baby meant that the entire twelve thousand dollars would be hers, in addition to other gratuities. So, Barbara decided to draw upon her experience of the few years she spent in nursing school to make sure everything went right. That became her first salvation, since she voluntarily quit smoking and any drug habits she had, though she constantly worried whether the residual effects of the drugs in her system would affect the baby.

  Luck was on her side once more, as Barbara delivered a healthy baby boy weighing seven pounds, nine ounces, by caesarian section, at nine months, three weeks. She walked away from Norfolk General Hospital, two weeks after healing completely, with twelve thousand dollars in her purse, and didn’t look back. She knew deep in her heart that one day, she would miss the child, that she would ache for him. Just then, though, she was filled with too many plans for her future—plans she wanted to accomplish with the twelve thousand dollars—to let herself worry over that. Her first thought was to go back and complete her studies and obtain a bachelor’s degree in nursing. She knew, however, that she could not accomplish that with only twelve thousand dollars. So, she decided to keep searching for a job. Having been successful in kicking her drug and smoking habits, she knew she could get and keep a job. She had grown wiser in the three years she was wheeling and dealing in the world. Moreover, after the grueling experience of surrogacy, she wasn’t sure that was a business she could do on a regular basis, and how many times would she even be able to do that? Another support line in Barbara’s life was that she had reestablished contact with her auntie and could call her from time to time for useful advice. Being the only kin Barbara had who actually cared a hoot about her, she was determined to turn her life around to impress her auntie and win back her support.

  During her numerous trips to Norfolk General, she had met and established a kind of friendship with a young intern struggling to finish medical school. He was a handsome Bohemian by name, Josef Bernard Horacek, and he became Barbara’s heavy crush. Mindful of hospital policy, he kept his distance, and she tried to keep hers, too, but one thing soon became apparent: It soon became a routine for them to run into each other in the hospital cafeteria. It became clear, too, that most of the encounters were not by mere happenstance. The attraction was mutual. Having left the hospital after fulfilling her surrogacy contract, Barbara had no way of meeting him any more on a regular basis, but she kept in touch by phone. For some reason, though, Mr. Horacek did not once ask Barbara out on a date, which worried her increasingly by the day. Not wanting to be pushy and give herself away as being cheap and desperate, Barbara decided to bide her time. Besides, he had a promising future. She would monitor him and wait for his full graduation, then she would set her feminine wiles in motion to get him for herself. She would sometimes catch herself at an unguarded moment dreaming of herself as Mrs. Horacek. Who knows? Dreams sometimes do come true.

  Barbara thought hers was coming true when, less than a month before his full graduation, Josef Horacek told her during one of their phone conversations that he had pooled a small fortune together to start and run his own clinic after graduation. Barbara immediately blurted out, “Can I come and work for you?”

  “Sure, if you have the qualifications. I don’t see why not,” he said.

  “What qualifications are you looking for,” she asked.

  “What qualifications do you have,” he countered.

  “Well,” she started haltingly. “I only have an associate’s degree in nursing.”

  “Why, that’s good-enough qualification to start with,” he replied. Barbara couldn’t miss the enthusiasm in his voice. Affected by the contagiousness of it, she chattered excitedly about all the things she would do to help him start off the business. He went on and on, too, on what a great working relationship they would have with each other. That evening, they talked well into the night before saying their ‘goodnights’, barely able to contain their excitement enough to get a good night’s sleep.

  The clinic did take off, as planned, after four months and a lot of ground work, especially with City Hall ordinances and building codes for clinics, as well as the National Institute of Health (NIH) policies and protocols, the American Medical Association (AMA) accreditation, and other hoops to jump through. Josef Horacek worked hard to meet all the requirements and the license for running a clinic with a specialty in obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN). He had to have mentorship supervision for the first three years. It was here that life threw Barbara a curve she would have gladly done without.

  Dr. Josef Horacek’s mentor, herself an OB/GYN, happened to be one of his former professors in medical school who had a daughter almost the same age as Barbara. The young lady was also finishing medical school at about the same time that Dr. Horacek was working to get his clinic off the ground. Though she graduated a heart surgeon, her mother’s supervisory work with Dr. Horacek, which brought him to her house on numerous occasions, saw her daughter taking more than a mere liking to Dr. Horacek. And this was not without her mother’s sly manipulations. Barbara had started noticing it barely six months after beginning work at the clinic. The young heart surgeon had started frequenting the clinic for no purpose at all, and she would be closeted with Barbara’s boss in conversation for hours on end. Curiously, still, her boss had not invited her out on a date, which, initially, Barbara put it down as the need for professional distance between boss and employee. But no such protocol was necessary after hours and, besides, it
was his private business, not a public institution for him to live by such strict boss-subordinate code of conduct. She had thought of becoming pushy, but, on the advice of her auntie, ruled it out. She needed the job, and she was highly paid, too. She knew Dr. Horacek purposely paid her higher than what her qualification merited because she worked hard and knew her job, and he probably didn’t want to lose her. But she had an inkling there was some other reason, which she also could not figure out. She became increasingly worried by the day because her biological clock was ticking in fast forward, not marking time on the same spot. The experience of her parents’ failed marriage and the tragic story of her family that ended with her mother’s death in prison—a death which she still blamed on her absentee father—had inhibited Barbara from venturing out with men in the hope of possibly getting married and settling down. Dr. Horacek was the only man she felt comfortable with, but from the looks of things, he didn’t seem interested in her romantically. He seemed content with the platonic relationship they had. So, Barbara began toying with the idea of getting pregnant by in vitro fertilization (IVF). Although she’d had an occasional one-night stand when she was living a self-destructive life, she hadn’t gathered enough confidence to trust in a relationship that tied her to a man only because they shared mutual parentage of a child. So, she had ruled out sleeping with a man just to get pregnant. But it seemed now that she would jump at that opportunity with Dr. Horacek, if he cared enough to ask. The latter, however, just seemed to content himself with being nice to her, paying her a mouth-watering salary, fiendishly clutching to his smug aloofness in the name of professional ethics and pretending not to notice her desperate flirtations. This irritated Barbara to no end, especially when he would make time to sit in his office in an hour-long conversation with his mentor’s daughter. She thought it was probably because she was not a doctor. So, in the autumn of 1990, Barbara decided to register in a course to study for her B.Sc. in Nursing. She also became very eager to get pregnant and have a baby of her own.

  Barbara threw herself into her studies and lived only for work and study. Two years later, her efforts paid off hugely when, at the end of spring in 1992, she graduated magna cum laude. Dr. Horacek promoted her with an even greater mouth-watering salary package, a gesture which Barbara later used against him, accusing him of imprisoning her with money while punitively starving her emotionally. And this came on the occasion when Barbara, by now a very ambitious young lady, was laying out a plan to try killing two birds with one stone. She went on to register for her Masters in Nursing while also intending to get pregnant by IVF at the same time. She figured she could work and study part-time while nursing the pregnancy. She wanted the child to be her graduation gift to herself at the end of her master’s program. Her auntie was no less excited when she listened to Barbara’s plan. She was very proud of her, especially for turning her life around and, despite family tragedy, setting herself on the road to success in life. And so, she didn’t hesitate to encourage her to move ahead with the plan.

  Barbara would keep wondering, years later, what imp put such a scheme in her head, except that, for some reason, she had thought it was time for her to become pushy and claim what she thought should belong to her by right. Having laid out her life plan for the next two years with the help of her auntie, she decided to bait her boss for a chance to corner him for a long-overdue date and, who knows, perhaps things might finally move to the next level. So, one night in the summer of 1992, she picked up the phone and broached the subject. She started with her plan for a Master’s degree in Nursing, about which her boss was even more excited than herself, and kept saying, “That’s great! That’s great, Barbs! That’s great! I support you fully!” Then she hedged toward the difficult subject.

  “Doctor, I was also thinking…” she began.

  “Great things happen when people start thinking, Barbs!” Dr. Horacek chimed enthusiastically. “So, what about?”

  “About a child,” Barbara replied, using her best baiting voice, husky and sexy. “I was thinking it’s time I got married and settled down. My biological clock, you know…” she trailed off waiting for Dr. Horacek to respond.

  “Oh, you have found a man, then?!” Dr. Horacek replied, with the same level of enthusiasm as before. “So, who IS the lucky SOB?!”

  “Yes and no,” Barbara replied. “Yes, I found a man more than three years ago, and no, as he doesn’t seem to notice me, no matter what I do.”

  “Well, either the man doesn’t know there’s a gem at his feet waiting to be picked up, or he’s not interested in marriage. Have you discussed it with him?” Dr. Horacek asked, genuinely concerned.

  “I am currently in discussion with him, but he seems so obtuse and aloof,” Barbara went on. “I don’t know how to get him to understand. If he doesn’t realize what he’s missing and wake up, I’d probably try IVF. I want a child. My experience with surrogacy that time and the feeling I’ve had since then tell me I need a child of my own. Maybe I CAN try IVF.”

  “Well, if the man you are talking about isn’t interested, then yes, IVF is a good idea,” Dr. Horacek concurred.

  “What do you mean ‘IVF is a good idea’?” Barbara asked, querulously. Her tone caught Dr. Horacek off guard and confused.

  “I mean, um…” He stalled and cleared his throat. “I mean that you can get pregnant by IVF if you…”

  “I know what you mean, but I just want to know why that is a good idea for you,” Barbara warmed to her fight, to the surprise and confusion of Dr. Horacek.

  “Goodness, Barbs! I’m just agreeing with you that…”

  “How dare you agree with me?” She interjected sounding quite hostile. “So, if the man whose attention I’m trying to attract pretends not to notice me, then I should go and get pregnant by IVF. And that’s a good idea for you?”

  “Barbs, I don’t understand why you’re so upset!” Dr. Horacek sounded distressed. “I don’t think I’ve said anything offensive. You mentioned IVF, not me.”

  “Yes, I mentioned IVF, not you,” Barbara raised the tempo of her fight. “But I wasn’t mentioning it for you to agree with me. Guess what? You wanted to know who the lucky sonofabitch is? Well, the lucky SOB, as you call him, is you. You are such a smug and a bore, you take refuge under some obsolete code of professionalism and pretend you don’t notice my feelings for you, even when I openly flirt with you. It’s been more than three years, Doctor!”

  “Oh, gosh! Oh, no! I should have known that was where you were heading.” Dr. Horacek said, almost to himself. Then he addressed Barbara more directly. “We’ve been very good friends, Barbs. It’s not like I don’t notice you.”

  “I didn’t want to be just ‘good friends’ with you. I wanted more than that. I wanted to be asked out on a date, I wanted to enjoy my first decent kiss by a man with you. I wanted you to sweep me off my feet and take me on a vacation with you. I wanted….” Barbara choked, sobbing loudly over the phone.

  “Barbs, please calm down,” Dr. Horacek tried a conciliatory tone again. “Calm down. Please, stop crying. It isn’t as easy as you think. It’s complicated.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Barbara replied, seeming to calm down from her outburst, but still not done with her fight. “Especially with that old haggard mentor of yours breathing down your neck, pretending to be supervising your work when all the time she’s busy pushing her bimbo daughter on you.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Barbs. Will you quit that kind of language?” Dr. Horacek demanded with firmness. “She is not an old haggard and her daughter is not a bimbo. I know I became too eager to get my clinic licensed and I let myself fall too far in, and now I can’t seem to be able to get out.”

  “What do you mean?” Barbara asked, as though with renewed interest. “So, you have made up your mind. You don’t want to have anything to do with me?”

  “I wish it was a simple matter of making up my mind. It’s complicated, Barbs.”


  “What do you mean ‘it’s complicated’?” Barbara asked, genuinely confused.

  Dr. Horacek heaved a sigh on the other end of the phone and said, “Vivian is pregnant with my child.” There was a deafening silence on Barbara’s end of the phone. Her voice, when it came back on the line, was intriguingly calm.

  “Yeah. I can see what you mean. It’s complicated.” She broke off again into an uncomfortable silence. Dr. Horacek cleared his throat, but couldn’t think of anything else to say. An aeon seemed to pass, and then Barbara spoke.

  “Doctor, will you promise to do me one last favor?” Barbara asked.

  “What do you mean?” Dr. Horacek asked, disguising his voice to hide his panic. He had heard of people committing suicide over unrequited love. Barbara’s voice was menacingly calm, too calm for comfort, considering her previous outburst, just a few minutes earlier.

  “Promise that you will give me a good recommendation for my next job, just for old time’s sake,” Barbara said, still sounding very calm. In his relief, Dr. Horacek gave her a bear hug in his mind. The last thing he needed in his career was a Romeo-and-Juliet scenario.

  “I still don’t understand what you’re talking about, Barbs,” he hedged. “Why do you need a recommendation for a ‘next job’?”