by Greg Curtis
As he stood there reading, waiting to unload his groceries, David was torn. More badly torn than he had ever been in his life. Which was why he came to the decision he did. The only decision he could make.
He put the papers back on the display and when the lady in front moved on started unloading his groceries on to the counter. Sometimes the best thing an agent could do was to do nothing. And more than that to know nothing.
Chapter Twenty Two
They sat in the doctor’s office, slowly becoming more and more worried while he sat in the next room, staring at the computer screen and mumbling incoherently. They could see he was shocked by what he’d found; in fact Doctor Fossiter was slowly turning grey in front of them, but he still refused to tell them what was wrong. Instead he just punched more keys and stared in apparent horror at the results, while they stared in horror at him in turn, unable to see the screen for themselves.
“I knew we should have used protection. You’ve picked up a bug.” Yet it was little use blaming themselves after the event. Especially after so many months of unprotected sex. He knew that. So he quickly shut up and held her hand instead while they both fretted. But at least the Leinian's medical science was advanced. Logically he knew they would be able to fix whatever was wrong. He hoped. Besides she wasn’t sick. At least until they’d come here she’d been fine. Just a little tired. It had just been a check up. Until the doctor had made him put on one of the stupid little hospital gowns as well and he'd known something was wrong. Surely it couldn’t be that bad.
“I told you. We did all the tests. Your diseases don’t affect us. Ours don’t bother you. It can’t be a bug.”
“What else can it be?” There was really no answer and they both knew it. It was just a question of how bad it was.
Before they had any time to argue, the doctor came rushing back into the room, as close to absolute panic as David had ever seen one of the Leinians. He quickly made them shuffle over to the examination bench, and before Cyrea was even seated he started pulling out sharp bits of medical equipment from a cabinet and assembling them hastily into some sort of wire contraption.
“Whoa Doc. You’re not using that on Cyrea.” David didn’t know what it was, but it looked distinctly nasty.
“No it’s for you.” And before he could even react the doctor ordered him on to the bed instead. After that he began fastening the device to his hips. David looked on, alarmed, resisting the sudden urge to run, while Cyrea held his hand. Apparently the bug had been picked up by both of them even though he felt perfectly well. In fact since the surgeries he felt healthier and fitter than he had in many years. He let the doctor finish his business, worried, but still knowing he was trying to help.
“Lie flat Mr. Hill. This will sting just a bit. Ayn Cyrea hold his head.” Obediently David straightened himself out on the bench with his head in Cyrea’s arms. Not for the first time he resented being gowned in the doctor’s office, especially when he wasn’t ill. Why did they need to scan him? But at least he was comfortable. He wanted to ask what the device was going to do, but a sudden stabbing pain told him. It was going to drill a red hot hole through his groin. He made to leap off the bed but Cyrea held him for the vital second, and then the pain was over. At least he hoped it was.
“Shit a brick that was bad! What do you mean sting a little? It’s a damned nightmare!” He took a deep breath and made to get up and demand that the doctor explain what he was doing, when Cyrea started undoing the metal contraption. He looked around to find the doctor had fled once more into the next room again, and was busy fiddling with some of the more bizarre equipment. He hadn’t even stayed to tell them what was going on.
Soon the device was free from David’s pelvis and he breathed a sigh of relief even as he wondered whether it would be considered too barbaric to stomp it into hundreds of tiny pieces. Regardless, he wouldn’t be allowing it near him again anytime soon. But the pain had gone, and he was suddenly comfortable. Lying down with his head in her arms; even in a strange room, with a half-crazed doctor rushing around, while he was wearing a stupid hospital gown on a table, it wasn’t so bad. He smiled at her, nervously.
Strange noises started coming from the other room and they both turned to look. The doctor had apparently lost all control and was busy jumping up and down, ranting down a communications device, and still staring at the damned screen. David wished with all he had that he too could see what the doctor saw, even though he knew he probably wouldn’t understand it. But the screen was pointed away from them, no doubt intentionally.
“Did we do all that?” It was a rhetorical question, and in any case Cyrea didn’t have a chance to answer as other doctors arrived and rushed past them into the room. They also began staring at the screen and shouting incoherently at each other. One after the other they all started fiddling with the controls and shaking their heads.
“I don’t feel that ill.” Cyrea was slowly turning pale, and he knew he didn’t look much better.
“It's not just you. It's both of us.” Whatever it was it had to be bad and the nightmare of AIDS kept running through David's thoughts. He didn’t have it as far as he knew, though he’d not been tested in years. But he had been careful. But could it be something just as bad? Or worse? He got up and held her tight, trying to ease both their fears while they waited.
It was a long wait punctuated by the sounds of more and more doctors arriving in frantic dashes, none of them caring to say a single word to the two panicking patients. Soon the doctor’s room was filled with other Leinian doctors, all jostling with each other for room and arguing incessantly in perfect silence. David cursed the room’s obvious sound proofing repeatedly.
Fifteen minutes going on a lifetime later, their original doctor finally remembered them, and re-joined them. He was nervous and flanked by at least a dozen of his colleagues who were just as bad. More were still in the next room, arguing. They had kept multiplying while he and Cyrea waited, until it appeared as if half the ship was there. One of them at least had the presence of mind to turn around the computer screen so they could see what was on it through the window. To David it looked like a bunch of wiggles, but he had seen them before. They were DNA, chromosomes. A genetic virus?
“Ahh Ayn Cyrea, David, it’s…” He ran out of words, but then must have seen the look of terror in their eyes. “It’s not that bad, please. It’s really not. In fact it’s a good thing, I hope. But it’s also not possible.”
“Cyrea you’re pregnant.” He just blurted it out. Then he saw the look in her eyes and backed off quickly.
“No, no. I’m not kidding. You really are pregnant.” He hastily turned on another monitor then and they saw what he was talking about first hand. It was a foetus all right. A tiny bundle of living baby, curled up in a foetal ball. They could see its head, its beating heart, and the umbilical cord.
“There’s no doubt about it. It’s about two and a half months along, and you can easily see its arms and legs. It’s even got fingers and toes. It looks perfectly normal. Absolutely perfectly normal. But it’s still not possible.”
“David, it’s yours.” David hadn’t even considered the possibility that it wasn’t. He was still trying to absorb the knowledge that Cyrea was pregnant when she couldn’t be. But as soon as the doctor said it, he understood his reason. It was impossible for him and Cyrea to have a baby. They had known that from the very beginning. But he also knew Cyrea hadn’t had sex with anyone else. Even if she’d wanted to, which she most definitely didn’t, neither of them had had the time. They’d spent every available minute together.
“I didn’t believe it. No-one else believes it. But the computers don’t lie. It’s yours – No, she’s yours. She’s a girl. The baby’s got some of your features as well as Cyrea’s. We can find some of the human DNA genes we’ve sequenced mixed in among the chromosomes. She’s yours. Somehow your DNA and Cyrea’s have combined. It’s not possible but they have. They do. That’s what we were just doing. We took some mat
erial from you, and mixed it with some of Cyrea’s tissue, and watched it combine under the microscope.”
“We watched it quite a few times.” From the look on his face he was probably going to watch it a few more times as well. A lot more.
“It’s a perfect match. Base pair to base pair, it simply combines, the same as if you were both Leinians. And looking at the results, it not only combines perfectly, but the DNA sequences have to be identical. Your hand shape genes for example are in exactly the same place on the same gene as hers. So is every other gene. And they all code for the same characteristics in identical ways.”
“The result is a hybrid.” Which to David’s ears sounded disturbingly close to freak and he hated the word the instant he heard it. “An impossible fusion of human and Leinian, but one that looks totally healthy. I promise you that. We’ve checked the baby out very closely, and there is no abnormality, no trace of any problem. And we will schedule you in for daily appointments if necessary to make absolutely sure she stays that way.” He kept trying to reassure them about the health of the impossible child even as he tried to deny its existence. Behind him a field of heads nodded and shook in perfect harmony with his.
“But I do need to ask you one thing.” Finally the doctor looked nervous about something, and they both worried again.
“You don’t have to make a decision today, though soon. But if you don’t want to keep the baby -.” That was about as far as he got before they both screamed at him, instantly outraged at the thought of losing their baby that couldn’t possibly exist. He wilted before them. Then they in turn cringed as they understood that there was at least a possibility they were going to have a child.
“Good. Believe me we don’t want to do that. And we don’t think it’s necessary. But we do understand that you must be dreadfully scared, and it is so new, that we have to make the offer.” They understood all right, but that wasn’t the same as accepting it. He struggled on quickly, trying to avoid eye contact.
“In less than seven months, if nothing goes wrong – and we have no reason to think it will,” he added the last hastily, “You are going to be parents to a bouncing baby girl. A girl with her mother’s fur and tail and by the looks of things her father’s hands. Fingernails, not claws. But whatever she has she looks fairly normal. There’s nothing freakish about her, just a little different. Not ugly, not deformed, just unusual in a nice way. Exotic.”
“It’s too soon to say what all the other traits are there that she’ll have from each of you, but we will know long before she’s due to arrive. Tomorrow even we should have a much better idea. Today we’re still trying to load the new data into a computer that thinks we’ve gone crazy, but tomorrow we’ll have the problems fixed, and the scan results worked out. Tomorrow we’ll show you what she looks like, and what she will look like when she’s born.”
“And in the six or so months until then we’ll have sequenced the entire human genome and be able to tell you everything about her before she’s born. And hopefully also it’s possible that she is to be born at all.” An older, greyer head spoke up from behind the doctor. David didn’t recognize him, but Cyrea clearly did from the way her eyes widened. She kept her silence though, but David knew he’d find out later.
“I don’t believe in cosmic accidents of this scale. Nor do I accept miracles at face value. Someone’s playing a nasty joke on us all, and we will find out who. But regardless, it’s clear that we should have done this most basic work five years ago instead of chasing our tails on so many other witch hunts.”
“I promise you both, we will spend every waking hour from now until then, finding out everything there is to know about this.”
“But that doesn’t really matter now.” Dr. Fossiter had re-joined the conversation. Apparently he’d also re-joined the world of the two of them. For the first time there was a new emotion in his voice; authority. He was their doctor and he was telling them what to do.
“What does matter is that you’re going to be parents and you have to start acting as such. And I mean that. Since you’ve chosen to have her, which we heartily approve of, we expect this baby to be born like any other. Cyrea, that means no alcohol, no drugs and no excessive exercising. David, it’s your job to keep her to that.” David felt like saying that in the last few months he’d never seen a drop of alcohol pass her lips, and couldn’t imagine her touching any chemical, when the last part registered. It was going to be a problem after all. He nodded though, knowing he would succeed, somehow.
“There are some exercises we’ll want you to do, and others we want you to take more easily. I’ll give you a list tomorrow - David.” He added the last carefully, perhaps understanding that Cyrea had no idea of limits when it came to exercising. The message was clear, he was in charge of that part of her life.
“Before you ask, sex is good, as long as Cyrea’s not too tired. But Cyrea has to start eating more protein and complex carbohydrates, while cutting down on the saturated fat. I’ve got some supplements that will help with the tiredness, and also a good foot rub and massage is prescribed every day. But most important of all, Cyrea needs her rest. That means early to bed every night and no early starts. Cyrea from this moment on you are also on restricted hours, as is the case for every expectant mother. That means six hours a day, three days a week maximum, for the next three and a half odd months, then four hours for the next two.” There was something about the way he emphasized the word ‘maximum’ that suggested he knew Cyrea’s work habits.
“Next week you two will begin your pregnancy classes, slightly behind your class mates but not too far, and I’ll give you some catch up notes and exercises to do before then.” David had the distinct feeling that they would be expected to have completed them before class. It was not negotiable.
“I know that when you go home, you’re both going to start panicking again. But before either of you starts feeling too frightened by this, don’t. You’ve already nearly completed the first trimester without even knowing, and in the maternity business the first is the worst. Most babies with serious problems are lost then. She’s nearly through it without any worries, and she’s perfect. She’s a normal healthy baby. I don’t know how many times I’m going to have to repeat that, but I will. She is a normal healthy baby.” He was almost shouting it at them, though David wondered if he was telling it to them, or himself.
“I also want you to know that you are going to be the first couple in history to have an entire hospital unit working day and night just to make sure you both get through this, and have a beautiful baby daughter to show for your trouble. This may be unexpected, but that doesn’t mean we don’t know what to do. We do. We’ve delivered hundreds of babies here, many with very serious problems. Your daughter has no problems at all. She’ll be no trouble.” Under his coat David wondered if he was sweating. Were his fingers crossed behind his back?
“You will be back here tomorrow at 11:00 am sharp, after a nice lie in and a good breakfast, so we can run some more tests. I’m sure you want to know everything about your daughter, who she takes after and how, and so do we. Tomorrow we will be able to tell you that.”
Chapter Twenty Three
In bed that night to say they were still stunned was an understatement. For David it was as though somebody had smashed him in the head with a shovel, and he’d spent the day almost incapable of thought, rational or otherwise. Anything he actually did do, be it make the lunch or weed the garden, he did on automatic, most of his brain running around in ever decreasing circles.
At the heart of it was the entire concept of having a baby of course. It was something David had never expected and he had no idea how to prepare for it. And yet he wanted to. That was the strange thing. As the doctor’s news continued to echo in his tired brain, he kept experiencing moments of complete transcendent joy, followed by moments of total panic. With his background he wondered if could ever be a good father; then he remembered the looks of the doctors that morning and wondered again i
f they had made a mistake. Or that they hadn’t but that the baby would be a freak. He so didn’t want any child of his suffering. And he couldn't stand the thought of her being teased as a result of her mixed parentage. And so his day continued, as did Cyrea’s.
She hadn’t spoken much after the appointment. Neither of them had, wrapped up as they were in their shock, but he knew she felt all the same things he did. Only for her it was surely even more intense, as the baby was growing inside of her. Part of her. And she’d never expected it.