by JA Schneider
Thirty milligrams! Thirty milligrams!
With the vial of heaven in her pocket Kassie hurried out and across the hall.
Just in time, too. Ganon and the interns were emerging from a near room.
5
“H e likes Beethoven,” Tricia had said in one of her calls to them, so Beethoven it was: his swoony, joyous Violin Concerto, Movement #3, Itzhak Perlman playing.
Beethoven could also be noisy, so David lowered YouTube’s volume and turned his iPhone toward the fetus, whose little face lit and looked delightedly through his cylinder’s watery environment to the music. His tiny arms lifted and his legs kicked happily. Yay!
From Jill’s arms came a whimper. She smiled down at the tiny girl in her arms, then handed the preemie in her little pink blanket to David, who settled in a rocking chair, cradled her, and started to bottle feed her. Like Jill, he wore latex gloves.
They were in the preemie nursery, a softly lit room with twelve, occupied, Lucite-domed isolettes and pictures of lambs and puppies on the wall. By the wide arch leading to the regular newborn nursery was a sign that read NICU: Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
David gazed down at the preemie he held. “She’s doing well.”
“Yep. Gained three ounces.”
From where she sat Jill looked back at the fetus, the astounding little human that Clifford Arnett, brilliant and crazy, had started in a Petri dish and transferred to this silicone cylinder, filled with amniotic-like fluid. They had flipped the switch that illuminated the cylinder’s interior; the glow emanating from within was a soft, mellow pink. A tranquilizing color.
Arnett. Jill’s heart dove as she saw him again skidding down the roof to his death; saw herself clinging desperately to the cracking rain gutter. Blinking, she stared harder into the tranquilizing pink, trying to lose herself to Beethoven, waiting for her breathing to calm.
Seeking calm was partly why she’d asked David to come here, after the stress of rounds with Ganon. They’d both been eager to see the fetus anyway...that part was lovely…and these Arnett flashbacks were to be expected…but for how long?
There was also Jill’s continuing fear of heights; of even the reeling, nauseating swoon of looking down. Psychological? Or had something really gotten unwired in her?
During her rounds with Ganon she’d kept her computer notebook open at chest level, scribbling nothings in it to avoid having to look down. Then…nooo…they’d almost all had to go down a quick flight of stairs for one patient. Ganon wound up sending just Tricia and Ramu, thank goodness.
Jill wasn’t ready for stairs. Elevators were okay, but stairs, no way…yet, and she worried about that. Running up and down stairs was such an integral part of staff life in the hospital. The elevators were slow…
She pulled in a deep breath, finally found herself calming as she watched David with the preemie, rocking slowly, patiently. From the two-ounce bottle he held, the tiny girl sucked her mother’s breast milk.
“They’re both the same age,” Jill said quietly, gazing back to the fetus. “Six months.”
David nodded, also glancing up at the little guy. “He could be viable now.”
Feet away softly whooshed a three-foot cube that looked like a cross between a heart-lung bypass machine and a dialysis unit. Tubes from it carried oxygen and nutrients to the fetus’s umbilical cord, and carried out carbon dioxide and waste products.
The cylinder was a man-made uterus. The three-foot, whooshing machine functioned like a placenta.
The Berlin Philharmonic surged. Perlman played.
Jill listened, starting to fret again. “You think he’s going to be okay?”
“He looks okay,” David said. “Ahead in development, actually. It’s mind-boggling.”
“No, I mean…psychologically? What if he turns out to be, I dunno, psycho or something.”
He shrugged. “We get plenty of psychos the usual way. I’m betting he’ll just be a regular kid. The media’s going nuts about this, but…” David inhaled thoughtfully. “Here’s a crazy thought. Wouldn’t it be something if Arnett discovered a way to make having babies easier on women?”
“Yeah,” Jill snickered. “Having babies is a scream.”
He curled her a smile, then they fell silent again. Two nurses were also in the room. One, three rows back, was checking the fetal monitor of a blue-blanketed preemie. Another, closer to them, had pushed her gloved hands through an isolette’s two protective side openings, and was gently re-taping a preemie’s breathing tube. The Lucite lids were to protect the little ones from bacteria.
Done, the first nurse left, smiling at them as she went out.
The second nurse straightened, made notes, then looked over at the fetus moving around in his cylinder.
“I can’t help it,” she said uncomfortably. “That gives me the creeps.”
Jill and David said nothing, trying to hide their annoyance.
The nurse gaped. “His mouth is opening and closing. Like a fish.”
David checked the fetus, glanced back, and said, “He’s looking for his thumb. You’ve seen sonograms of fetuses sucking their thumbs.”
“When you’re a fetus, it’s not easy finding your thumb,” Jill snapped.
The nurse rolled her eyes and left. Jill and David traded looks.
Quietly he said, “This little guy will need to be protected.”
The whole world knew about him. Those blurry pictures in the media, taken after they’d made it from the roof back to the attic, with cops and astonished staff members rushing in. “A lab, here?” was heard over and over. The attic in semidarkness made for creepy fetus photos sneaked out. EMBRYO FARM, blared headlines, and DESIGNER BABY, ARTIFICIAL WOMB, and BRAVE NEW WORLD.
Jill leaned forward stiffly. “In a way, it’s Louise Brown all over again.”
David nodded. “World’s first test tube baby, born in England in 1978. Oh, didn’t all hell break loose? Immoral! Abnormal! There were even doctors who thought she’d have birth defects, be a monster. Today she’s a regular mum with a regular life.”
“I read where kids were mean to her in school,” Jill said thoughtfully. “She felt alone, was taunted, called a freak.”
“That’s because doctors taped her C-section delivery and showed it to the world.”
The music had stopped. David glanced up again at the fetus, who seemed to be getting sleepy. “He’ll be born privately, and…adopted, and…be maybe no Mozart or Einstein, just a regular kid.”
“Arnett said he’d have huge intelligence, a whole lot of immunities, and a really long life span.”
“Arnett was a megalomaniac nut, remember. I’ll bet he was wrong.”
Jill bit her lip and thought about that. Then checked her cell phone for messages.
“Oh damn,” she said, listening.
The two ounce bottle was finished. David scooped up his preemie from underneath, his left hand supporting the blanketed rump to the shoulders, his right hand supporting the head. He rose and put the little girl back into her isolette.
“Oh damn what?” He re-shut the preemie’s Lucite lid. “The one o’clock meeting in Graham’s conference room? Hospital Administration wants to see us?”
She screwed up her face and nodded.
“I got that message.”
“Do not want to go.” Jill’s words were low and rushed. “Last time I was there they were ready to kick me out!”
“This time is different. They’re stuck with us and they need us. Don’t sweat it.”
“Sweat it? That bunch terrifies me. Gives me hives. And you know what? I’m tired of being scared.” Jill looked around. “Gotta re-build my confidence, right? Could you wait a minute? Just a minute?”
He watched her rush into the supply room at the end of the preemie nursery. Below stacks of medical storage boxes, she pulled out a step stool.
“For starters,” she said as he approached her, concerned, “I’m going to overcome my brand new fear of heights.” She placed her f
oot on the stool’s first step. “I mean, it’s silly, right? Fear of heights? Of even looking down an innocent flight of stairs?”
“Jill, maybe wait a day…”
“No, this is important. The elevators are slow, everybody has to run up and down the stairwells…” She went up to the second step, balancing herself. “See? I’m going up!”
“Uh, what goes up must come down…”
But she was determined, already teetering on the top, third step. “Now,” she said firmly, chin up. “To show you that this morning’s episode was just temporary, I’ll just step back down. Three little steps! It’s a beginning, isn’t it?”
“Jill-“ David stepped to her as she…looked down. Was suddenly being flung out the tall window onto the slippery slate roof, then hanging from the roof gutter about to crack, and plunging…
Her knees gave out, and she fell swooning into David’s arms.
He held her. “You conscious?” He checked her face. “Okay, elevators for a while. They’re not that slow. In a few days, this will pass…”
“Oh God,” Jill breathed, her face buried in his shoulder. “Try to sound convincing.”
“I am convinced.” He held her tighter. They were surrounded by shelves of gauze pads, ventilator tubes, IV tubing, and monitors. “You will find a way through this. Just give it time. Don’t be impatient with yourself.”
“Time, huh?” It was warm and comforting, melted into his shoulder. She felt him glance at his watch. Nooo!
“Speaking of time,” he said…
He got her moving out of the small room. “You okay?” His arm was around her.
“Yes. Head’s clearing. Oww!”
She’d bumped into the supply room doorjamb. “I’m injured,” she said weakly. “Can I have a doctor’s note to skip this meeting?”
“What? And make me go alone?” He peered deep into her eyes. “You clearing more in there?”
“Yes, yes. Cleared for takeoff, dammit.”
They headed out the preemie nursery’s wide aisle and then through the regular nursery, a bigger grid of isolettes whose squirming, squalling occupants seemed huge after the preemies.
“It’s only 12:20 anyway, which gives us time,” David said. “I want to make another stop first.”
“Where?” Jill scowled, still rubbing her head.
“The mail room.” He grabbed two plastic bags used for disposable diapers.
“Why the mail room?” Then it came to her, and she clutched again. “David, no. Tell me you’re not serious.”
“Yeah, I am. C’mon, you can do this.”
6
Two bulging canvas bags. His and hers.
The large mail room, divided into sub-sections, was located near the Emergency Room with its own loading dock at the end of the extended parking lot for ambulances and police cars.
A broad-chested, blue-smocked clerk brought them the bags, wending his way past big stacked cartons, dollies, and brown-uniformed men with box cutters opening the cartons.
“Whew!” the clerk said, dropping the two bags on a counter. He was winded. “Say, why don’t you tackle ‘em over there in the snail mail section?” He pointed. “Snail mail sure still lives when it comes to hospitals.”
When he left they lugged the bags back to an aisle canyoned by tall, unopened cartons. O.R. lighting equipment, said the labels. They sat on the floor feet apart, opened the bags, and started opening the letters. David suggested making separate piles for anything creepy. “Just for samples,” he said.
It didn’t take long.
Perfumed, pastel envelopes ripped open with declarations of love, from both men and women for both of them. Nothing nasty-creepy though.
More envelopes ripped open.
“Found one,” Jill said, skimming; then, “Eeyew! S&M!”
“Into the creep pile.”
David found the next one and looked at it. “He sent a photo of his penis. Thinks it’s unusual. Insists on meeting.”
Jill shuddered. “Creep pile. Hey, this was a good idea.”
“I get a few.”
In twenty minutes they’d found about fifty.
“Text me darling. I’m waiting…”
“…just KNOW you’d love me.”
“…dine to meet you.”
“If you do abortions YOU SHOULD DIE TOO!”
“I can meet you at the hospital…”
“…want to take my dong and shove it hard up your…”
David checked his watch. “It’s enough,” he said. “Just a sample.”
They gathered the creep letters into the plastic diaper bags. “Fitting,” Jill snickered. Piled the unopened letters back into the canvas bags, lugged them back and thanked the clerk. A female clerk working near him said, “Got a lotta fan mail, huh? So how do you like being famous?”
“It’s overwhelming,” David deadpanned.
“Well, you’re both sure heroes to us!” she beamed; then said, “Oh wait! This bunch just came. Hospital sent volunteers to help sort.”
Another clerk was rolling up a canvas bin on wheels. It was half full of mail for them.
Jill made the mistake of looking down into it. Dark pastel envelopes became roof slates and she was falling again. She fought it, turned to David.
A camera flashed. Then another, and several voices spoke at once.
“Aw, aren’t they romantic?”
“Stop by again!”
“Hey, will you pose with me?”
David said something Jill didn’t understand, and got them out of there.
Howard Graham was the Hospital Director. His Administration Office and conference room were on the second floor. Interns and residents rarely had to go there; it usually meant reprimands.
For Jill and David, it was the second time in eight days.
Jill remembered that first time clearly: the room crowded with bewildered OB staff…and police. Howard Graham presiding stiffly at the head of the table, flanked by what Jill called the White-Coated Tribunal and what the hospital called its Genetic Research Committee: austere Chief of Department William Stryker; thin, scholarly-looking Bill Rosenberg; fat, bespectacled Willard Simpson, and now-in-hell Clifford Arnett.
The first three…what a joke. The country’s greatest brains in helping human infertility, early diagnosis and treatment of birth defects and inherited disease, and improved methods of managing high-risk pregnancy…and none of them had seen the big, awful picture; the pattern in the recent spate of OB tragedies.
Jill had researched, stumbled, and fumbled onto the truth. When she found it, David saved her life and nearly lost his own.
In her mind she replayed that first, tense meeting - because really presiding was Detective Gregory Pappas, on his feet and pacing behind Graham, his cop’s eyes probing every face. With him stood two uniformed cops. Pappas had come to say he was opening an investigation into “two murders, a kidnapping, and a burglary all connected to this hospital.” He’d been brief; had questioned Jill, others, and shown horrible photos of one murder victim. After the police left, Jill faced the White Coat Tribunal’s firing squad.
This was a catastrophe! Everything they’d dreaded. There’d be blaring news stories full of lurid, ridiculous exaggerations, all because of the meddling and misinterpretation of this disloyal intern! Terminate her! Impound all department records!
To which Jill had fired back, “Cover-up! You’re just afraid of endangering your reputation!”
David had had to drag her out of there.
Now, eight days later, he was trying to drag her back in.
Approaching, they argued low-voiced in the halls.
“They hate me,” Jill said. “Fat Simpson does anyway. I’ll bet if he’d known what Arnett was really doing, he’d have covered it up.”
David gave a shrug. “Rosenberg wouldn’t have. And Stryker…”
“Yeah, what do you think he would have done?”
“Have a stroke. Go through shock…” David looked down at the tw
o plastic bags he was carrying. “I think,” he said solemnly, “it would have killed him. Remember how he came to you? In the attic when we got back in off the roof?”
Jill bit her lip; inhaled resignedly. “He seemed…awkward. Suddenly very old.”
“And what did he tell you?”
“’Thank God you’re alive. Please accept my apology.’ He was like a different person. I’d never seen him out of his lab coat, and there he was at 5 a.m. in old pants and a shirt that looked yanked out of the laundry.” Jill remembered feeling a surge of sympathy for him. All along, this tight-lipped authoritarian had been…maybe just afraid? For his still-controversial program which could be hurt by one breath of scandal, while hundreds of infertile and high-risk pregnancy couples were still desperately needing help?
Jill was quiet as they rounded a corner. “I have this irrational feeling,” she said. “Like I should feel guilty or something.”
“You saved lives. Kept Arnett away from others.”
Her feelings conflicted, collided. “So what are they going to say in there?”
“Don’t worry. Now even Simpson needs us. The tip-off was turning us into a photo op this morning. The hospital P.R. department must have planned that. We’re the heroes they hope will offset the bad headlines.”
David stopped. They’d reached the hall that led to Administration. He waited until a clerk passed, and dropped his voice even lower.
“The good news is, we’re all they’ve got. The bad news is, we’re all they’ve got. So expect to say No a lot, diplomatically if possible. No to interviews, TV ads saying “Come back, this place is safe!” He held up the two plastic bags. “We’re out there enough as it is.”
They resumed walking. Jill frowned slightly and said, “How do you know all this?”
“I don’t. It just makes sense it’s something we should be prepared for. Why else would they be summoning us? For balloons and a welcome back cake?”
How empty the conference room looked this time. Only six people: Stryker this time at the head of the table; Howard Graham, hospital director, on one side of him next to Willard Simpson. Across from them were tired-looking Rosenberg, an overdressed woman in her mid thirties, and an artiste-looking dude of about the same age sitting next to her. Their big, ingratiating smiles practically hollered P.R.