Hybrid (Brier Hospital Series Book 7)

by Lawrence Gold

  Lola, a small woman in her eighties was standing before a large, poorly dressed woman, pointing her finger. Lola and her husband, Jacob were holocaust survivors. “I don’t give a damn,” Lola said with her soft Austrian accent.” You bring your daughter in tomorrow or the next thing you’ll see is Child Protective Services at your front door. Get it?”

  The woman lifted her umbrella. “We don’t do this shrink mumbo jumbo—it’s a lot of shit.”

  “Although you may be the one who needs therapy most, get your daughter here tomorrow morning, or she’s going to foster care, and you’re going to jail.”

  The woman turned to Denise. “Dr. Berg. Who in hell does that old lady think she is…God?”

  Denise smiled. “Around here, she is. Be smart. Do what she says because sooner or later, Dr. Weizman’s going to have it her way.” Denise paused. “And some day, you’re going to thank her for caring enough to help both you and your daughter.”

  After the woman stormed out the door, Lola turned to Denise and looked her over. “You look like you’re ready to pop. How much longer?”

  “Any time now. I’ll sure be glad when this is over.”

  “Can’t make up your mind. You fought harder to have a baby than anyone I’ve known. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

  Denise studied Lola. “Enjoy late pregnancy?” She paused. “What year is it, Dr. Weizman? Who’s president?”

  Lola laughed. “You’re right, of course. Sixty years takes the sting out of pregnancy.” Lola paused. “Anyway, I have a gift for you. They’ll deliver it for lunch.”

  “Lunch?”

  “Yes, it the pregnancy pizza. Two spicy-hot slices and you’re on your way to labor and delivery.”

  “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  “Trust an old lady, and give Gabe a warning.”

  The next morning, Gabe, Jacob Weizman, and Lola were standing by the bedside while Denise beamed with joy as she tried to hold Zack, their baby boy, to her breast. He had a full head of red hair.

  “After all that time and effort,” Denise said, “at least the delivery was easy. And, when they placed the crying Zack on my chest, and he calmed down at once, I knew that this…this was what made the whole IVF ordeal worthwhile.”

  “Don’t worry about breast feeding, he’ll catch on,” Lola said, “they all do.” She paused. “Late July—that makes Zack a Leo.”

  Denise smiled. “I can live with that: confident, ambitious, generous, and loyal.”

  Jacob frowned. “I can’t believe that you’re both scientists—you need your heads examined.”

  Jacob was two years older and two inches taller than Lola. He wore a tweed suit and a bow tie. “If my eyesight was a little better, I’d have delivered Zack, myself. I delivered Gabe and most of his family.”

  Denise smiled at Jacob. “How many babies have you delivered, Jacob?”

  “Two or three thousand, give or take a few hundred.”

  Lola laughed. “If you multiply that number by forty or fifty, you’ll get closer to the real figure.”

  “Eight pounds nine ounces,” Gabe said. “Look at those long arms and legs. That’s a good start.”

  Jacob stood. “I see Gabe’s family heading this way, Denise.” He paused. “Too bad that your parents didn’t live to see this day.”

  Denise looked down, nodded. “When I was eight, my mother, Bela, came to me one day after school. She said that it was getting too dangerous in Basque country and she was shipping me to her sister in Chino, California. I was stunned—shocked, and finally terrified at the thought of leaving everything I knew.”

  “Can you imagine what it was like for her to send her daughter away?’ Lola asked.

  “I was a kid,” Denise said. “I didn’t understand how they could do this to me. I begged, my father Marko, but all he said was that it was for my own good. Little solace in that.”

  “More proof of man’s inhumanity,” Jacob said. He paused. “Not your parents, of course. They were simply victims doing the best they could for their daughter.”

  “Basque country to Chino by yourself must have been culture shock,” Lola said.

  “Learning English and finding friends was most difficult, but gradually I got it. I wrote, but never lost the sense that they had abandoned me. Then one day,” she paused, “Their letters stopped. They had been killed; nameless victims of a conflict beyond their control. The exact circumstances that led them to send me away.”

  “Personal tragedy led me into psychiatry, too,” Lola said. “It’s insight we psychiatrists gain the hard way.”

  “We’d better go,” Jacob said. “You two are going to be great parents. Show Zack that you love him every day and keep your expectations to yourselves. He’ll show the way, if you let him.”

  When Gabe arrived the next morning, Denise was getting dressed to go home. The nurses brought a cart for the flowers, new-baby cards, and stuffed animals. She hugged Gabe. “Let’s go to pack up Zack from the nursery for the trip home. He’s out of my sight for a few minutes and I’m missing him already.”

  “Why don’t you just enjoy your freedom. We won’t have much for the next 18 years or so.”

  Denise smiled. “I can’t. He’s already part of us. You’re not having second thoughts, are you, Gabe?”

  He laughed. “It's a little late for second thoughts.”

  She took Gabe’s hand. “Are you worried?”

  “Not on your life. I can handle you both.”

  Zack was in the first row as they looked through the nursery window. Gabe took out his iPhone and took several photos.

  Jorge Moneo, now greyer, and balding was staring through the nursery window. He turned and smiled at Denise and Gabe. He spoke with a subtle Spanish accent. “Your first?”

  “How could you tell?” Gabe asked.

  “It’s that special look. We love all our babies, but the firstborn is special.” Jorge bowed and offered his hand to Denise, and then to Gabe. “Alberto Moneo, at your service.”

  “Moneo?” Denise said. “That’s a Basque surname, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, of course. It surprises me that you recognize the name.”

  “My family’s from Donostia-San Sebastian. You know it?”

  “Of course,” Jorge said. “Some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. What is your family surname?”

  “Garcia.”

  “Jorge laughed. “That’s like Smith in the USA.”

  Denise smiled and pointed through the glass. “Is one of these yours?”

  “Thank you for the compliment,” he said with a smile, “but that opportunity never existed for me, and I’m sure that my bishop would object.”

  “You’re a priest?” Gabe asked.

  Jorge nodded. “That one,” he pointed through the window, “is my godson. The blue blanket tells me you’ve had a son. What’s his name?”

  “Zachery, but we’ll be calling him Zack,” Denise said.

  “The Lord remembers.”

  Denise and Gabe stared at the man.

  “It’s the Hebrew meaning of his name…a good one, too. He has loving parents, I can tell.” He paused and looked up. “This may sound strange, but I sense things. Zachery’s going to have an interesting and fulfilling life. The best of luck to you all.”

  Moneo turned, slipped on a cashmere car coat, tipped his fedora, and walked away.

  Denise turned to Gabe. “What a lovely man.”

  Chapter Three

  (1952)

  Jorge, the “priest” at the nursery when Zack entered the world, was the second son born to Danel and Maria Moneo in the beautiful Basque city of Donostia-San Sebastian on the coast of the Bay of Biscay. Alberto, his brother, was three years older. Their middle-class life was virtually idyllic until Danel moved them to Madrid for a position at University Complutense, the oldest university in Spain. Jorge who was 12, Alberto, and Maria were unhappy with the move, but the position at the university was prestigious and a rare opportunity for a prof
essor of Basque heritage.

  Jorge and Alberto loved to sit at their father’s side and listen to his tales of Basque history, culture, and achievement in the arts and the sciences. “Nobody really knows where Basques came from,” Danel told them, “and our language and genetics are unique in Europe. Some scholars think the Basque people are all that remains of the Atlantean race.”

  “I love those stories about Atlantis,” Jorge said, “the lost world, but it’s a fairy tale, the ruminations of Plato, and the deranged thoughts of the psychic, Edgar Case.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Danel said. “We came from somewhere, and nobody has yet to explain our language or genetics. Moreover, the Atlanteans were an advanced culture with great mechanical and artistic abilities.”

  Our Basque family oral history has it that we descended from the Denisovan region of Siberia, moved to the Neander Valley of Germany, and then to the Basque Country. That makes our family the oldest and purest of the Basques.

  “I never thought much about being Basque,” Alberto said, “until we moved to Madrid. I can’t believe how much the Spaniards hate us.”

  “It's jealousy,” Danel said. “We’re the advanced culture on the Iberian Peninsula—they’ll just have to live with that.”

  Maria, always reluctant to enter into conversation, said, “I hear it in the market every day. They treat us like blacks or Native Americans in the United States. They hate us.”

  Jorge was in awe of his father. “Someday, I want to be a teacher, too.”

  Danel patted Jorge’s shoulder. “With your love for knowledge, you’ll be a great teacher, I can tell.”

  While Danel was always professionally circumspect about his political attitudes, when Spain banned the Basque language and implemented oppressive tactics against the Basque people, Danel became increasingly supportive of Basque separatist desires in his lectures. After several warnings against proselytization for the ETA ( Euskadi Ta Askatasuna ) the militant Basque separatist organization, the head of the department of political science fired Danel.

  They returned to their homeland, and Danel became active in the ETA.

  To Jorge, the ETA was the protector of the Basque culture. “They’re heroes,” he said with trust in his father and the naivety of youth.

  Alberto cared little about politics. He had focused his energies on the Catholic Church, planning a life in the priesthood.

  After several members of the ETA were murdered, and others arrested, Jorge became frightened for his father. “Please, Papa, lay low for a while, at least until things calm down.”

  Danel rubbed Jorge’s head. “Passivity is dangerous. It’s a luxury we can’t afford.”

  When the Cuerpo Nacional de Policía, CNP, ( the National Police ) stormed into their home one evening, they pushed Jorge and Maria aside, threw Danel to the floor and beat him with clubs. Alberto sat bent in prayer. Maria screamed, and Jorge charged the men, who then broke his hands and clubbed him into unconsciousness.

  Jorge awakened to find Danel in bed with blood-soaked bandages on his scalp. The local Basque physician stood by shaking his head in sadness and disgust. “I’m sorry, Maria. Danel has too much brain damage. There’s nothing I can do.”

  Danel lingered in a coma for two weeks, and then, with Maria, Alberto, and Jorge at his side, he took his last breath.

  The ETA had no difficulty rousing the public to Danel’s martyrdom at the hands of the hated CNP. The funeral procession moved through the streets of Donostia-San Sebastian. Mourners stood along the streets while the CNP had agents within the crowds and policemen with automatic weapons at each corner.

  When Jorge volunteered to serve the ETA, its leaders said, “You’re too young. Follow Danel’s footsteps into political science. You can best serve the cause that way.”

  Jorge, still bitter and angry, managed to complete his undergraduate training in education, and then entered the combined master’s and Ph.D. program at the University of Navarra, where he focused his interests on experimental educational techniques. The program director invited Jorge to join the Global Center for Gifted and Talented Children and the European Council for Higher Ability. Jorge helped found a school for exceptional children in the Basque Country. “These children,” the program director said, “are the Basque people’s future.”

  Meanwhile, Alberto had entered the seminary and been ordained.

  Jorge found himself living in two different worlds. While striving to get the best for Basque children, he participated, on occasion, in direct ETA actions.

  When the ETA blew up a Spanish school bus killing twenty-two children, Jorge vomited at the roadside. Gradually he became inured to the violence, and shared the ETA’s rationalization that Spain’s genocide against the Basque people would continue while the world stood mute. They embraced the “just war philosophy” of Thomas Aquinas.

  Alberto bristled at Jorge’s enthusiastic participation with the ETA. “They’re murderers—they kill the innocent and the guilty alike.”

  “We have no choice,” Jorge said. “We’ve tried everything else.”

  “Terrorism is never justified, and,” Alberto paused, “it only makes things worse.”

  “You’re wrong, Brother. Look at Nelson Mandela, a terrorist who may someday be a leader in his country. Look at early Israel, and Northern Ireland. Terrorism works when all else has failed.”

  “Nothing justifies the taking of a human life. You and your beloved ETA are not God.” He paused. “And, please don’t give me the ‘ends justify the means’, argument. The means are, in fact, the ends.”

  Jorge shook his head in disgust. “You pray for us, Father. We fight or we die—that’s not much of a choice.”

  When Jorge was twenty, the ETA asked him to join its board. “The son of a martyr,” they had said, “would be useful in advancing our political objectives.”

  “Political objectives,” Jorge laughed bitterly. “That’s a fool’s errand,” he had told friends. “You don’t invite the wolf to dinner when you’re on the menu and you don’t bet the survival of your race on fantasy.”

  At an ETA retreat, Jorge met Arrosa Mendoza, an ardent activist, and a Ph.D. student in molecular biology at the University of the Basque Country. Neither believed in love at first sight, but there it was. After two months, they married. A year later, they had their first child, Abbaran, the Basque version of the name Abraham. Jorge’s mother, Maria, who had been living alone, moved in with them to help with the baby.

  They’d spend their evenings watching Abby at play and discussing the legacy of the Basques.

  “It's difficult to talk about the Basques,” Arrosa said, “without being called chauvinistic at best, and racist at the worst. Some Basques believe that they are God’s chosen people and that their language was the language of Eden before the fall.”

  Jorge took her hand. “You don’t sound like a molecular evolutionary scientist with those comments.”

  “That’s nothing,” she said. “You should hear Professor Manni.”

  Dr. Javier Manni was Arrosa’s Ph.D. advisor. He was an elegant man with a full head of grey hair with a few streaks of residual red, and a matching beard. He was chairman of the Department of Molecular Biology with a special interest in Basque genetics.

  While he knew his views on the origin and the characteristics of the Basque people were far from being politically correct, he was convinced of the primacy of his race.

  Arrosa was sitting before his desk for one of their routine meetings on her progress toward her degree.

  He looked at her. “I know my views on the Basque people are unwelcome even here at our own university, but I do believe that Basques are unique.”

  “Unique is one thing,” Arrosa said, “but superior—‘the chosen people,’ is another.”

  “Yes, I know, but facts are pure. They imply nothing but themselves. Some, however, twist facts to support preconceived notions. The simple observation that Basque DNA is pure and homogeneous has incited racists
to claim that we are the purists of the white race—we’ve heard that before and we know exactly what that means to some.”

  He grabbed his pipe and went through his usual ritual before lighting it. “Let’s leave that highly charged issue aside for the moment,” he said. “Here’s what we know for sure: Basques descended from the earliest group to migrate to Europe. Their language is unlike any other European language. In addition, the Basques have the highest recorded level of Rh-negative blood, lower levels of Type B blood, and a higher incidence of Type O. There’s even some evidence that the Basques are all that’s left of the Neanderthal culture.”

  She laughed. “Neanderthals—that won’t do much for our image.”

  Javier frowned. “You’re a Ph.D. candidate, yet you believe every myth about Neanderthals.”

  Arrosa laughed. “Maybe they need a NLF, a Neanderthal Liberation Front, to spin their image.”

  Javier leaned back in his desk chair. “Here are the corrected misconceptions: Neanderthals are more like modern man than we thought. Perhaps, some have suggested, a better version of man.” Javier paused, and then continued. “If you like that, you’re going to love this: we have evidence that Neanderthal/ Basque culture may be descendants from the survivors of Atlantis.”

  “You’re kidding—Atlantis?”

  “We’re seeing more and more evidence that Atlantis was real, an advanced culture, and that a cataclysmic event destroyed it. I don’t know about you, but I like the prospect that we’re all Atlanteans.”

  “The next thing you’ll suggest is that we, Atlanteans, may carry alien DNA.”

  “As a matter of fact…”

  Jorge shook his head in dismay. “He really said Neanderthals?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “And, I don’t know if he was kidding, but he mentioned aliens.”

  “He’s out of his mind.”

  “Professor Javier Manni is many things, but being crazy isn’t one of them, He’s a serious scientist and investigator. Even if he’s losing it, even if he’s extrapolated too far, I’m not the one to stand up and tell him he’s nuts.”