by JA Schneider
No, Jesse was the astonishing fetus Jill had discovered last July in a hidden lab, in what at first blink had looked like a rounded fish tank. ARTIFICIAL WOMB, blared headlines as the news hit; DESIGNER BABY, EMBRYO FARM and BRAVE NEW WORLD. Creepy blurry pictures of him, floating in his cylinder at six months gestation, were snapped by staff rushing in to the nearly dark attic where Jill had found him.
And almost died. David too. They were both almost killed.
She blinked; for an instant saw herself again bloodied and screaming and David hauling her back to safety. Trauma had bonded them, fast. Had it happened too fast?
She still felt tense with him, but the awful sign below made her speak.
“See that one?” she said faintly, tipping her chin down to the crowd, to the SPAWN OF THE DEVIL sign.
The guy holding the sign had his megaphone turned up; through the glass they could hear him screaming “…the arrogance of taking the place of the Creator! That child up there is evil!”
David let out a breath. “Yep,” he said softly. “Nice, huh? Just one religious nut.”
She turned her head toward him. “About last night…”
“It’s okay. We’ll talk later.”
He stepped closer, nuzzled the back of her neck. She had her long, dark hair up in a ponytail. His white-jacketed chest warmed her back in its thin scrub top. She closed her eyes for a second.
Then looked out again, hugging Jesse.
“The cops are taping?”
“You know it. And hospital security.”
It didn’t comfort her. Last July an army of cops and security hadn’t kept a killer from Jesse. After that crisis came three months of relative quiet…and now, suddenly, the scene down there was back…like last July’s sweltering crowds when Jesse’s discovery lit its first firestorm. Had people saved their same signs? THANK YOU MADISON MEMORIAL FOR OUR FAMILY jostled next to IVF IMMORAL, and ADOPT AN EMBRYO. The only difference now was, the leaves were turning. It was autumn and the days were shorter. Jill raised her gaze. Beyond the surging mess of disagreeing humanity glowed the first bright dabs of gold and orange, tinted even brighter by the setting sun…
“Doctor Levine?”
“Damn,” David whispered. “How many more?”
“Never ending,” she groaned back.
He touched her arm and went back to today’s bunch of researchers, white-coated and intense, grouped scribbling and conferring around Jesse’s empty isolette. Three days ago the hospital had started allowing excited researchers in in small groups. Jill and David were obstetricians, not pediatricians, but the hospital had assigned them to speak with researchers because they’d seen and interacted with this child since three months before his birth.
Just two hours each afternoon, but it was getting old. The same astonished questions asked and answered, over and over. Couldn’t they just all wait for the hospital’s Chief of Pediatrics et al to write their damn paper and get it online?
No. They begged and besieged, just had to see the babe. Poke him and prod him and study his normal chart notes for themselves. Miraculous! Lungs…heart…every organ and neurological response normal! Gestated nine months outside a woman’s body!
Jill glanced briefly back at them. Today, three neonatologists from Texas, a pediatric neurologist from Boston, and a pediatric hematologist from London.
Drone…drone… Jill tuned them out. Tuned out David too, answering the same bleeping questions as yesterday and the day before. She was back to looking out the window, thinking not for the first time that he was a much nicer person. She was rash and impatient. He was an explainer, a patient teacher who rarely had to show his tough side…which was why he was OB’s third year resident charged with teaching younger residents and Jill’s fellow interns.
He was her boss, they slept together, and she loved him…say it…but it led to some interesting minor wrangling.
Not that last night was minor.
“I want to adopt him!” trilled the blond pediatric neurologist (“Corinne! Call me Reenie!”), who wore too much perfume. Jill made a face that no one saw, then heard an annoyed, “Git in line.”
Tricia!
Chubby-cheeked, bespectacled Tricia Donovan, fellow intern and Jill’s best friend since med school, had just entered the NICU from the connecting regular nursery; was heading for Jill and waving to David.
His handsome face split into a grin. “Hey Trish! How’d the delivery go? The twins throw you?”
“Nah. Sam caught one and I caught the other. Slid right down da chute.”
David grinned again and went back to the white coats. Tricia, reaching Jill, whispered, “Admiring the mad cow herd down there?”
“There’s a sign-”
“Saw it. Came to check your fever chart. What’s Jesse doing out of bed?”
“Blondie back there used a cold stethoscope on him. He started screaming. I scooped him out and calmed him down.”
“Lemme guess. She researches and writes papers more than she handles babies.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She has donkey teeth.”
David’s voice was starting to sound hoarse, so Tricia turned to answer the next question for him.
“Yaaas, Jesse grinned and waved at us at twenty-four weeks gestation. Or flopped his hands, I guess you’d call it.” She stepped closer to them, flopping her hands to show how hands flopped. “Did something like a wave.”
“You saw him too?” asked one of the Texas neonatologists, a thin, older man behind thick glasses.
“Several of us visited him regularly.” Tricia glanced at Jill, approaching too with Jesse. “When he wasn’t asleep, we’d hug his cylinder and goof around and play music for him. He likes Beethoven.”
“Beethoven,” Texas repeated solemnly.
Jill said, “We tried the Stones, Clapton, ‘Twist and Shout.’ They made him agitated. But Beethoven - he’d do swimmy, dancing little motions to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, um-”
“Third Movement,” Tricia said. “We just stumbled onto it. It’s really happy music.” She switched tacks. “What’s really amazing is, till now we – all of us – have only been able to see fetuses in ultrasounds. This little guy we really watched develop. Other staff members did too.”
“You took pictures?” a Texas white coat asked.
“Yes,” Jill said. “They’re in that folder we gave you. They’re not being released to the media, but they’ll be in a paper the OB and Pediatrics Departments are preparing together.” She started to put still-sleeping Jesse into his isolette.
David said, “Aw, lemme hold him.” She handed the blue-blanketed bundle to him and he cradled the infant, used his free right hand to pat the baby’s wisps of light brown hair.
Jill watched, feeling bereft, feeling Jesse’s warmth leave her arms. It was always a wrench, separating from him.
A second Texas neonatologist said, “But he isn’t waving and responding now. He’s mostly sleeping like any newborn.”
“His hemoglobin’s adjusting,” David said, and the London pediatric hematologist nodded eagerly. He wore a flowered tie, Nike running shoes, and was younger than the Texas trio.
“Before birth,” he said in his elegant British tones, “fetal blood absorbs oxygen more readily than ours because there’s less oxygen in the womb, and this tyke’s cylinder apparently duplicated the womb environment perfectly. Now he has to convert to adult-type hemoglobin like any newborn. It takes three months for a complete fetal hemoglobin turnover.”
“Plus, everything’s growing,” said blond Corinne emotionally. “Every cell and organ in his little body. That takes energy. Another reason why newborns sleep so much.” A hesitation. “Will you keep us updated on his development? The first month especially?”
Jill and Tricia traded looks. Saw Blondie gazing dewy-eyed at David. No surprise. He was gorgeous. Tall, rugged-looking, penetrating dark blue eyes, dark hair that kept falling over his brow.
And like everyone else, Blondie ha
d seen him in news chopper footage shoot a killer dead on a roof. Now he was cuddling an infant, stroking the little cheek with his index finger. What woman wouldn’t get all dreamy-eyed?
“He’s going to be absolutely amazing,” Blondie crooned.
David shrugged. “Or maybe he’ll just be a regular kid.”
Tricia rolled her eyes, and Jill gave the woman a sour look. Gestured enough of this, and they went back to the window.
The scary sign was still down there, its owner still hollering into his megaphone.
“He’s gonna lose his voice,” Tricia whispered. “Be hoarse for a year.”
“Is insulin findable at autopsy?” Jill asked.
“Yes!” Tricia hissed low. “And you’re not going to sneak up and jab him dead.”
“What about morphine?”
“You know it is.” Tricia glanced up at her tall, slender friend, now frowning. “Something I gotta ask. At breakfast and rounds you were all tight-lipped and barely spoke to David. Wassup?”
“We had words last night.”
“A whole three months before your first ‘words?’ I should have such a relationship. I should have any relationship.” Tricia had been trying to lose weight lately. It made her cranky.
Jill blew air out her cheeks.
“I’m also just so damned tired of being afraid,” she breathed. “Of jumping at every shadow or threatening creep.” She hesitated, then her face crumpled as she looked at Tricia. “It’s suddenly like last July again. The nut jobs are back.”
Tricia glanced over at the bored security guard the hospital had belatedly put inside the NICU, then looked back as if to say, See?
No sale. “And when Jesse leaves the hospital?” Jill’s voice was despondent. “Grows up or tries to?”
Tricia got it, fell silent, and Jill seemed to sink into a fit of abstraction. Behind them, the voices now droned about Clifford Arnett, M.D., PhD, former second-in-command of the hospital’s Genetic Counseling Committee, and world famous in reproductive endocrinology and infertility research.
Also surprise crazy genius who had built Jesse’s cylinder and put him in it, done other research both stunning and shocking.
Dead now. Fallen from the same roof on which David had fought him and shot to death his murdering assistant.
A Texas voice: “Immeasurable tragedy. Brains and talent like that...”
London: “But he started out nobly?”
David: “So it seems. He wanted to increase immunity, delete inherited disease, and prolong life. His notes say he could snip cystic fibrosis and multiple sclerosis right out of the embryonic DNA. He didn’t say how.”
“He must have kept further lab notes.” Corinne’s voice.
“Somewhere. We’re still looking. He worked in an attic with a million nooks and crannies. Workmen have pulled it apart, and his regular lab-”
“Excuse me?” Jill had stepped back to them. “If you don’t need me,” she told David, “I’ll be moving along.”
“Where to?” His brow raised. He was still holding Jesse.
Tricia sidled up and said, “I’ll bet she wants to go assault that religious nut with the sign-“ and got a quick look from Jill: Don’t.
Too late. David handed Jesse to Tricia, explaining the SPAWN OF THE DEVIL sign. The others shook their heads, looked dismayed.
“Whackos,” said one of the Texas Three. “We’ve got lots of ‘em.”
“Catholics don’t even like IVF,” Corinne said. “But I’m Protestant. My pastor says God gave doctors the wisdom and ability to help people.”
The researchers thanked Jill as she headed out. To her annoyance David was at her heels, with Tricia back holding Jesse and explaining to London in his flowered tie why Jesse didn’t seem to like Clapton or the Stones.
“Just that Beethoven,” they heard her say. “I’ve got my iPod in case he wakes up.”
3
Jenna Walsh tried to open her eyes. She couldn’t. Her head was exploding. Her belly too. The pain, the pain…
Grit from the cold ground dug into her cheek. Bits of glass, too, it felt like. She had to get out of here; got her eyes open a slit. The light was suddenly different. Darker, the shadows longer. How long had she been here?
She had to get help. Her body trembled, but she managed to reach one hand out. Her fingers dug into the ground and she struggled, then clawed her way forward, inching toward the alley entrance. How stupid she’d been, to take a shortcut through here. Someone…who?...had attacked her from behind, punched and kicked her when she was down and curled into a ball with her eyes shut tight in horror. Oh God, why?
Her belly was so heavy, but she scrabbled forward, on her left side mostly, her elbow and knee helping her to push herself. She was inching closer. Just yards ahead, she saw people on the sidewalk. Traffic out there, horns blaring.
“Help,” Jenna cried in a feeble rasp. No good, too weak. They’d never hear her.
It was moving, the thing her attacker had put under her sweater. It was writhing and snapping against her chest as if it, too, was trying to escape. Oh God…
Whimpering in horror, with her head hurting more, she struggled past a green Dumpster.
Then her vision blurred, and something sharp sliced through her left palm. She cried out and tried to focus on her hand, dripping red from a glinting glass shard.
“Noo…” Shaking, on both elbows, she tried to pull out the shard, but her vision dimmed further, and suddenly it was hard to breathe. She heaved her shoulders up, her mouth open, and managed to pull in a gasp.
“Help!” she cried again with her last strength, her voice ragged and desperate.
She thought she saw someone glance her way, but a second later her vision quit. The alley around her flipped, and a high, queer ringing started in her ears. She gave up. Lay her head down on cold ground, struggling to breathe.
There was a shout, and another shout. She was dimly aware of sudden footsteps around her, hands on her, voices shouting “9-1-1!” and “ambulance!”
A gentle voice, bending close. “Who did this to you?”
“Don’t…know.” Her gasp was inaudible. The ground beneath her swung crazily. Her eyes opened but she couldn’t see. All was black.
“Can you describe your attacker?” The voice came closer to her face. Strong hands cupped her cheeks.
“Didn’t see…” she managed.
“You didn’t see your attacker?”
“No. Came from…behind.”
From far away she heard other voices.
“No sign of rape.”
“Found her purse, doesn’t look like robbery. Name’s Jenna Walsh.”
“Jeezus! Oh God, what’s this under her sweater?”
“Holy hell. Don’t touch, it’s evidence. Looks half dead anyway.”
Please…get it…off…me…
Her shoulders heaved desperately from air hunger. Her eyes squeezed in pain, her head hurting worse. Was that a siren she heard? Or the ringing in her ears? She felt hurried hands lifting her, voices babbling, a mask with new, cool oxygen placed over her mouth and nose.
So kind, the people helping her.
She wanted to tell them to be careful, oh please save yourselves, there’s a bomb in my head.
It’s going to go off…
4
In Jill’s on call room, he leaned against the closed door with his arms folded tightly.
“What’re you doing?”
“Changing into jeans.” She had her pants around her knees.
“What for? Your scrubs look like running pants.”
Jill looked down. It was true, the navy scrubs both of them wore didn’t look like scrubs. Okay, they’d do. She pulled her scrub bottoms back up.
“Who says I’m running anywhere?” She whipped over to her chest of drawers for oversized sunglasses. Peeked into the mirror at her intense, big green eyes as she put the glasses on, then pulled on a baseball cap low.
“You look like a female Unabomber.�
�
“That zealot’s hollering about Jesse! Outta my way.”
She made for the door. He stopped her, putting both hands on her slender shoulders. “Lemme go!” She squirmed angrily, getting nowhere.
“Maybe it’s the ones yelling with signs you don’t have to worry about,” he said, grappling with her. “Oof! Please stop. There’ll be plain clothes cops in the crowd, security cams-”
“I want his ugly pic on my phone.”
“We’re back on duty in twenty minutes.”
“It’s enough!” She yanked away and stomped around the little room. Her hands raised helplessly and tears came, she couldn’t help it. “Okay, I’m a mess.” She pulled the glasses off and swiped angrily at her glistening cheeks. “I’m just…worried about Jesse. What’s going to happen to him?”
“I’m worried too.” David’s voice softened. He left the door, exhaling, and took her in his arms. She slumped, melted into his hug, and felt comforted…for seconds. Then pulled away and resumed her stomping.
And last night’s argument.
“I found him and I love him,” she said.
“He’s not a puppy.” David sank onto the chair by the bed and leaned forward tiredly. Their argument last night had lasted till one and they’d had to get up at six. Upset, neither had fallen right to sleep.
“The problem,” he said slowly, “is us. We’re magnets for weirdos. Our faces have sold tabloids, blanketed the media. If you…” A hesitation. “…or we adopted him it would mark him for life, make him a target for every bully and whack job. If we went into hiding we’d still be recognizable, and he’d be tagged as that…freakazoid kid like July’s killer called him. Have you forgotten?
“How could I?” She’d stopped, breathing hard, and stood glaring at the closed door.
David stared unhappily at the floor. “Picture Jesse at age five, or fifteen. How will he feel knowing he was conceived in a lab and grown in a fish tank? That’s what mean kids will call it. Assuming religious nuts like your pal out there - who call him evil - don’t do worse to him.” A resigned gesture. “But if he gets adopted and grows up anonymously… Ow! What are you doing? My arm doesn’t bend that way.”