Strange Animals

by Chad Kultgen

  Dr. Prasad said, “So, I understand you’re pregnant. Congratulations. This is a very exciting time.”

  There was one God. That God existed in everything: in the earth, in the air, in animals, and in people. It was up to every human being to honor that God by following a few very simple rules for living. Among them were being honest, treating other living beings with compassion and mercy, having patience in all situations, and being as generous as possible. Every living thing was imbued with a soul, and that soul kept recycling after the death of the vessel in which it was housed until it had achieved enlightenment through experience. Science and technology were wonderful human creations that helped people do everything from the mundane to the miraculous. Having a child was something to be honored and celebrated because it meant that another soul was beginning its next journey in its own unique evolution of spirit. These were things that Dr. Niral Prasad understood to be true.

  Dr. Prasad said, “So how far along do you think you are?”

  “I’m not exactly sure, but I think somewhere around fourteen weeks or so.”

  “Fourteen weeks? That’s pretty late to be having your first visit to me.”

  “Well, I wasn’t sure until about ten weeks in, I guess, and then I—” Karen was on the verge of telling Dr. Prasad that she’d thought she was going to have an abortion, but she caught herself. She continued, “I just wanted to make sure that I actually was pregnant, you know, and that I was going to stay that way.”

  Dr. Prasad said, “It’s very common to feel that way. Many pregnancies do terminate in the first trimester, which is why it’s recommended that you don’t announce anything to family and friends until you pass the twelve- or thirteen-week mark, which it seems like you have. But all that said, you should definitely be coming in at least every four weeks from here on out. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Now, we need to do a few things here today, since it’s your first pregnancy visit. I’m going to need some urine, some blood, and we’re going to do a trans-vaginal sonogram. If you really are fourteen weeks, you’re going to be able to actually see your baby. We won’t be able to see the sex for another four weeks or so, but—”

  “Uh, I actually kind of just want to make sure everything’s okay health-wise with the baby and with me. I don’t really want to see it.”

  “Oh. All right. That’s a little . . . Would you mind me asking why?”

  Karen knew that the real reason was because she needed to maintain an emotional distance from the situation, and that seeing the baby growing in her, seeing the child that was equal parts her and Paul, would make that more difficult than it needed to be. She said, “I’m just kind of superstitious about it, I guess.”

  “Oh, well, you know there’s no reason to be, but obviously you don’t have to see the baby if you don’t want to. I can just take a look to make sure everything’s as it should be. So which do you want to do first? Blood, urine, or sonogram?”

  Karen gave blood, urinated in a cup, and then made her way back to the examination room, where she disrobed, put on a medical gown, laid down on the examination table, and let Dr. Prasad place her feet into stirrups. Dr. Prasad had examined her vagina many times throughout her life, using various instruments and on some occasions, with nothing more than her fingers. The device Dr. Prasad produced for this examination was unlike anything Karen had seen before. It was long and phallic and had an appearance that struck her as far more sexual than clinical. Dr. Prasad put a condom on the device as well as some lubricant, making it even more sexual, and then inserted it into Karen’s vagina. Karen could feel it pushing against the back wall of her vagina, which caused a slight amount of discomfort. Dr. Prasad said, “How are you doing?”

  Karen said, “Fine,” and turned her head away from the screen where Dr. Prasad was looking at the image created by the ultrasound wand.

  Dr. Prasad said, “Do you want me to tell you what I’m seeing, or is that also something you don’t want to know?”

  Karen said, “Uh . . . I guess just tell me if anything’s out of the ordinary—you know, if there’s something I should worry about.”

  Dr. Prasad said, “Okay.”

  After almost a minute, Dr. Prasad removed the ultrasound wand and said, “Everything looks fine. You can get dressed and meet me in my office at the end of the hall to discuss your next steps,” and then left the examination room.

  Karen got up, put on her clothes, and looked at the screen that just a few seconds before had displayed an image of her unborn child. She tried to stop herself from thinking about what it looked like, but she couldn’t help it. She wondered.

  Back in her office, Dr. Prasad told Karen that everything was fine. The baby was perfectly healthy, and her initial estimate of fourteen weeks was pretty accurate. Dr. Prasad said, “We’ll have your blood and urine work back in a few days, but I’m going to prescribe you some special prenatal vitamins anyway. Since you came in a little later than we like to see most moms, I think it’s best to just get your iron up to where it should be as soon as we can. Have you noticed anything strange or painful that you think I should know about?”

  “I’m getting cramps. I’m constantly tired. The morning sickness has started to wear off, but some things still make me a little sick to my stomach. My hair is falling out a little. I have a weird discharge in my underwear some mornings, and my back hurts almost constantly.”

  Dr. Prasad laughed, “I’m sorry to say, that’s all one hundred percent normal and there’s more to come. Eventually you’ll have more of that discharge. Moles on your body might start getting bigger. That nausea will eventually turn into ravenous hunger. Actually, that should start happening very soon, so you have to be careful to eat healthy. Gestational diabetes is sometimes a concern if you eat too much sugar or fatty foods.”

  Karen said, “Okay, so pregnancy is even worse than I thought.”

  Dr. Prasad said, “I don’t mean to make it sound like a nightmare, but the truth is, it’s tough on your body. There are ways to make it more bearable, but it’s going to be something of an ordeal. I like to be honest about that. But in the end it’s always worth it.”

  Karen said, “We’ll see.”

  Dr. Prasad said, “Obviously, if you have any questions, feel free to call or make an appointment anytime before your next scheduled appointment, which we should set for another four weeks from now.”

  On her way from Dr. Prasad’s office back to UCLA, Karen reminded herself that it wasn’t too late to get an abortion. It wasn’t too late to end all this. She wouldn’t have to go to any more ob-gyn appointments. Her body wouldn’t have to undergo any more changes. Paul wouldn’t be forced to make whatever decision he would ultimately make. Everything could go back to normal, to the way it was before she decided to do this. That was her last thought as she pulled into a parking spot in the same garage where she always parked at UCLA. As she walked across campus toward Professor Noone’s office, she saw a booth set up near the student union with a sign that read, “Sign a Petition to Support Intelligent Design Being Taught in Public Schools,” and she knew she had to go through with her plan.

  Once she was in Professor Noone’s office, he said, “So, I’m assuming you’re not here to ask for another extension, Ms. Holloway.”

  She said, “No, no more extensions. I have an idea, and I think it’s really, really good.”

  “And do you think I’m going to think it’s really, really good?”

  “I don’t see how you can’t.”

  “Well, that’s about the most confident lead-in to a dissertation presentation I’ve ever heard. I’m all ears.”

  Karen opened her laptop, brought up the web page she had made, and turned the screen around so Professor Noone could read what she had written. She watched his face to see if she could gauge his reaction as he was reading it, but he gave no indication. Instead, he finished reading the page, closed Karen’s laptop, and pushed it back across his desk toward her.

  She
said, “So . . . what do you think?”

  “Karen, this is really a fantastic idea.”

  “You think so.”

  “It’s phenomenal. All that time you took to think of this was worth it. At its core I think it presents an incredible philosophical quandary, and I think you can turn it into a fantastic dissertation. I’ve always personally been extremely interested in the problems with religious doctrine, when adhering to it means potentially ignoring or even defying certain principles of the same religion. So I gather you’re using this hypothetical situation to speculate on what American society might do if something like this were real?”

  “Well, I’m definitely writing about how America would react to this, but the situation isn’t quite hypothetical.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know this girl?”

  “It’s me.”

  “You’re pregnant? Right now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh my god. Karen, I don’t know about this. Is that already on the Internet?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “I appreciate that you’ve waited until you talked to me about it.”

  “Well, it wasn’t just you. I told my boyfriend about it, too. I understand that this will affect more than just me.”

  “It’s none of my business, really, but is he the father?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And what did he say about it?”

  “He’s still thinking about it. Look, Professor, I think this is important. This is what we were talking about—doing something that actually makes people think differently instead of just writing some ridiculous paper that no one reads.”

  Professor Noone took a deep breath and said, “Well, this certainly would be more than a ridiculous paper that no one reads. As I said, I think the idea is brilliant. I’ve spent most of my adult life in philosophy, teaching, studying, thinking, and I’ve never seen something like this come across my desk. It’s very daring, it’s interesting, it’s thought-provoking—and I’m just as curious as you must be about the public reaction. But I just can’t sign off on this in good faith.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “You’re proposing to hold the life of a child in the balance for the purpose of what is essentially an experiment. As a representative of the Philosophy Department, I obviously can’t support it.”

  “Because you’re afraid you’ll lose your job?”

  “My job has nothing to do with this, but that could certainly be at least one of the repercussions should you actually go through with this. I imagine you’d be expelled as well.”

  “You’d expel me for this?”

  “I wouldn’t, but the dean might. This could become the kind of issue that’s too big for me to stay in front of. Even if you manage to conceal your identity through the entire event, which I personally think is unlikely, your dissertation will be read by everyone on the PhD panel—and then you’d be on your own. I couldn’t do anything to protect you. And if you were expelled, you obviously wouldn’t finish the PhD program, making the entire endeavor fruitless for you.”

  “Fruitless? If I do something that forces people to look at how hypocritical Christians are and it actually changes things, then how is that fruitless—even if I don’t get my PhD from this school?”

  “Karen, you can write about this as an abstract idea, and it would still have an impact here and, I think, in the academic community at large. The idea is so strong, I don’t see why you actually need to do it.”

  “Because real people don’t care about ideas.”

  Professor Noone sighed, and said, “Look, I obviously can’t stop you from doing this, but I am going to strongly encourage you to write about it hypothetically and save yourself from, at the very least, potentially destroying your career in academic philosophy before it even begins. You’re extremely bright, Karen. I’m trying to help you, because I think you could be sitting in my chair one day, or any other chair at any other school for that matter.”

  “Maybe I’m not sure I want to be sitting in a chair, Professor.”

  Karen left Professor Noone’s office without a doubt in her mind that she had to go through with her plan. She had always despised the falseness of the academic world, but now when she was faced with the choice between yielding to it or cutting herself off from that world entirely, the choice became much clearer. She knew she was on the verge of something immense. She knew that Professor Noone was right: She could very easily write the theoretical version of this for her dissertation, get her PhD and slowly make her way through the academic world until she was a tenured professor at a college somewhere, maybe even a great college. But she also knew that eventually she’d be sitting across from a student who would have a proposal for a dissertation that was threatening in some way to the falseness of it all. And she knew she’d think back to the time when she had the chance to do something great, something groundbreaking, but she didn’t. She knew she’d always wonder what her life would have become if she’d taken the chance. She didn’t want to wonder. She wanted to know.

  When Karen got home, Paul was there waiting. He said, “Hey.”

  Karen said, “Hey.”

  He said, “So I’ve thought about this. A lot. And I . . . I don’t even know how to say this. Fuck. I love you, Karen, but I can’t do this.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t do this?”

  “I mean, I can’t be supportive of this whole thing. It’s crazy. I can’t do it.”

  “Okay, so what does that mean? You’re just going to sit by in protest or something while I do it?”

  “No. It means I’m moving out. I just can’t be a part of this.”

  Karen could feel tears coming. She said, “Are you fucking serious?”

  Paul, too, started crying, “Yes. I’m serious. This is a fucking huge thing, Karen. Jesus Christ. It’s our baby, and you’re treating it like it’s just a . . . I don’t even know, but like it’s not our baby.”

  Karen said, “But it’s not our baby. It’s not a baby at all. I was going to get an abortion. You’d be okay with that, right?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Well, one of the two outcomes in this is still an abortion, and the other is adoption, so I just don’t understand why you think you have to move out.”

  “Because this is fucking insane. How do you not see that?”

  “I know it’s kind of extreme, but it has to be to prove the point.”

  “Well, then, you’re going to have to prove your point without me. I just don’t want any part of this. It feels wrong, and if I feel like this now, how am I going to feel when you actually put that site on the Internet, when people start hating you, when you start getting more and more pregnant—when, at least for me, it is a baby? Karen, I’m sorry.”

  By this point, both Karen and Paul were sobbing. She had never believed that her desire to do something meaningful with her life would lead to the end of a relationship with the man she had grown to love more than anyone else. Paul, too, found the situation more than odd. One of the things he loved most about Karen was her intellect, and her unyielding rejection of modes of thought, such as religion, that she understood to be useless. But in this instance, for Paul, her intellect seemed to be treading on something sacred between them. Karen’s idea had triggered a level of inconsideration that Paul had never witnessed from her, and he concluded that she cared about her idea more than she cared about him or about their life together. That was the realization that forced his decision to leave.

  “So that’s it? Five years together and you’re just throwing it all out the window?”

  “I could ask the same thing of you.”

  “I have to do this.”

  “I know, and I wouldn’t ask you not to do it for me. And even if I did, I know it wouldn’t matter. Your mind is made up, so I don’t really have a choice. I’m sorry.”

  Paul hugged her one last time and kissed her on the cheek, then said, �
�I’m going to stay at Dave’s tonight, and I’ll come get my stuff in the next few days if that’s okay.”

  Karen couldn’t speak. She just nodded. Paul took a few steps toward the door and said, “I don’t know what else to say. Good luck, I guess. I love you, Karen, and I hope that however this all ends up is exactly how you want it.” Then he left.

  Karen sat down on the couch, still crying. She took out her laptop and read over the site that was stored on her USB storage device. The pain she felt at Paul’s departure began to turn to rage. She felt as if no one would understand what it was she was attempting to do, not Professor Noone and surprisingly not even Paul. Their refusal to be involved in her plan only fueled her motivation to go through with it. As she wiped the tears from her eyes, without going to an Internet café or back to one of the computer labs on campus, using only her own laptop in the quiet of the apartment she now lived in alone, Karen made the site live.

  chapter

  fourteen

  Although James was familiar with the Internet and knew how to navigate it, he primarily only used it to check his email, which was always work-related, or to browse a few Christian websites, ChristianMingle.com included. So as he walked into Woodstone for Sunday service he wasn’t exactly sure what everyone was talking about, but he could tell that most of the conversations were about the same thing, and it seemed like something extremely upsetting.

  As he walked down the hallway, Cathy Hobart stopped him and said, “Hey, how’s the head doing?”

  James explained that he had had a headache for a day or two, and the bruises where he was struck with the rock still hurt a little, but otherwise he was doing fine. She said, “That’s good. I still can’t believe how awesome you were. Seriously, so cool. So what do you think of that website?”

  James told her that he didn’t know which website she meant. Cathy said, “Are you serious? It’s, like, the biggest news story in the country right now. Do you not read the news or anything?”