EMBRYO 5: SILVER GIRL (EMBRYO: A Raney & Levine Thriller)

by J. A. Schneider

  also met deborah wylie, crying. talked to her.

  David stared in the darkness at his phone. After a hesitation, he wrote: bonus.

  sez hubs is innocent. wants me/us to help prove.

  he’s a prime suspect.

  “…previous loss of a child from the genetic disorder, or a previous pregnancy adversely affected by the disorder, or objection to terminating a pregnancy affected by the condition, or a couple who has a relative with the disorder…”

  deborah talks! about hubs & others. seems sad, nice.

  you did good. edna & deborah never would have talked to cops.

  Jill hesitated, then wrote: also met robin abel

  who?

  d’s asssitant. cops say she has hots 4 reid

  wot a tangled web

  we’ll talk more. wish i’d seen the twins

  They each drew deep breaths and leaned back in their chairs. Slides moved and changed. The eight-cell embryos of Day 3 grew and multiplied.

  “In some cases,” the London voice droned, “the biopsy will be done on Day 5 or 6, the embryo now consisting of many cells and called a blastocyst - hopefully to be genetically or chromosomally normal and ready for transfer back to its mother’s uterus…”

  The voice was elegant and soothing. Jill watched David scroll back through their texts and grunt approvingly. He put his phone in his scrubs pocket and lay his head on her shoulder. Last night’s sleep had been bad; the adrenalin of earlier gave way to the 3:30 droop. Exhaustion hit them both.

  David flipped the seat arm and sprawled on Jill’s lap. She smiled down at him in the semi darkness, lovingly brushed a lock of his drooping hair off his brow. He was asleep. He’d waited for her, then conked out. She felt her breathing grow heavy. Lay her head back, and fell asleep too.

  A strident voice jolted them awake.

  “Does pre-implantation genetic diagnosis replace prenatal testing?”

  Oh jeez. The lights were on and there was shifting and talking. How much time had passed? Jill lifted her head back up – argh, the neck ached - and David raised his head from her lap like a groundhog resenting intrusion.

  “Huh?”

  “Q and A time,” Jill scrunched to him, whispering. “Wise ass in front of us asked, and is now, uh, staring at us.”

  Which prompted more stares, and some giggles. Madison’s star OB/GYN pair was back there in a sleepy puppy sprawl, and Willard Simpson, Chief of Department, now stood with the visiting professor at the podium, seeing them.

  He was a friend but a tease, and couldn’t resist the moment.

  “Ah,” he said, peering to the rear of the amphitheater. “Let’s ask our Chief of Residents, shall we?” He repeated the question to make this less embarrassing: “Does pre-implantation genetic diagnosis replace prenatal testing?”

  David dragged himself to his feet like a sleepwalker.

  “No,” he said, his words sounding memorized, which they were; he probably could say them in his sleep. “Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis does not replace prenatal testing, such as chorionic villus sampling - the test done to screen a fetus for genetic problems - or amniocentesis.”

  He took a breath as Jill gave the med student in front of them a go to hell look. “Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis provides information based on the analysis of just a single cell. So prenatal testing is still recommended and remains the standard of care.”

  Grins abounded, and from seats down near the middle Woody and Tricia smirked hugely and gave thumbs up. Willard Simpson was pleased, the researcher smiled, and David sank back to his seat. New hands shot up and more questions shrilled. “Inherited genetic disorders versus chromosomal disorders?”… “muscular dystrophy?”… “Tay-Sachs?”… “breast cancer and predictable early onset Alzheimer’s?”

  David’s phone vibrated. He answered softly, listened.

  “Sam wants us,” he whispered, hanging up. “Pregnant woman in a car crash. Seven months, broken pelvis, orthopedics is gonna be there too.”

  “Crowded OR table.”

  Jill tensed like a shot as they headed out the double doors. That was another good thing about sitting in the rear. It was near the doors that were nearest the elevators.

  18

  The police lab at One Police Plaza was busy. In the center of a large room, two Tensor lamps lit the counter where a man peered into a wide, double microscope. He looked up, scowled, and tried again. His gloved hands fiddled with dials on one side, and then on the other, and the technician next to him, also in latex gloves and lab coat, finished preparing his slide tagged “EVIDENCE, RUSH.”

  “Okay?” asked the second man.

  “Yep, ready for our close-up.”

  He took the slide and eased it beneath the microscope’s second lens. Then he looked into the eyepiece at the combined image the double scope produced.

  The hidden world down there never failed to amaze him. Dust the size of comets, crud that looked like tapestries, and two human hairs, juxtaposed and looking like two telephone poles, with a line dividing them down the middle of the visual field. The poles looked drawn by a child with a fat black crayon.

  “On the right,” his assistant said, reading from notes. “The suspect’s hair taken from Merrill’s ring. It got stuck in the filigree.”

  The first man peered at the side-by-side dark hairs. “The hair on the left, there’s too much dust, other bits of something. They found that one on the floor?”

  “Yup. Some room where Connor and Zienuc interviewed him.”

  “It’s covered with dust. I’m going to take this up a power.” The first man reached to rotate the lenses, which each looked like three short, stiff fingers. “Going up …” he said, like an old-fashioned elevator operator.

  He looked back in the eyepiece. “Ah, now we’re there.”

  His assistant looked tiredly across the lab. It was almost six. The place was partly empty and he was starving. They’d spent the whole day going over evidence from the Merrill apartment and the Jarrett crime scene. Some lamps were on, some off. People rushed out to eat if they could. At a far counter a female tech processed fabric for a different job, and out in the hall he saw plainclothes people talking to uniformed men.

  “It’s a match,” the first man exulted. “The hair from Merrill’s ring and the one from Connor’s interview. Wylie’s toast.”

  “Don’t mention food. It makes me hungry.”

  “You’re always hungry.”

  “How do you stay so thin, anyway?”

  “Big secret. I eat less.” The first man was suddenly cursing and fiddling with a dial. “Oh, this is nice. Just great. Something’s the matter with the optical adapter.”

  “So? You’ve made the match. Now we call Brand and Blasco and go out, grab a bite. How’s a steak sound to you? Medium rare with a baked potato? God, I’m salivating just thinking about it.”

  “Can’t go yet, report has to be perfect.” More dial-fiddling. “I can fix this, I hope.”

  “He hopes, he hopes,” grumbled the assistant, getting up, throwing open drawers and spilling menus onto the counter. “That’s it. We’re ordering out. What do you want? Deli?”

  “Had that for lunch.”

  “Chinese? Pizza?”

  No answer. The first man was fiddling dials and scribbling notes. “They’re both Wylie’s hair,” he mumbled. “But there’s a problem, a big problem…”

  His assistant groaned, got out his phone and ordered two pizzas, giant sized, everything on them.

  There was more work to do, lots more. It was going to be a long night.

  “Luck,” David said wearily, “sometimes happens.”

  They’d just left surgery, a saved patient and a saved little preemie.

  “Luck and a good hospital.” Jill kept pace with him. “What if she’d been out on a deserted road?”

  It was 6:45. They’d spent nearly three hours in the OR with the car crash victim. Seven months pregnant, broken pelvis, C-section stat. Everyone was scrubbed
in, but the orthopedists had to wait while the OB team saved the baby - a tiny girl – who was assessed for vitals and rushed to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Then the teams had alternated: pelvic bone repair - orthopedists; uterine blood vessels and surrounding organs checked, uterus stitched up, abdominal wall closed - OB. Sam was called to another delivery. Jill and David spent more time with the patient in the recovery room. Her blood pressure post-op had been high.

  Now, scrubbed out, feeling their roller coaster adrenaline lose its grip again, they trudged the halls to have dinner with Jesse. It was a long walk through two buildings. It was also Jill’s first chance in hours to tell more about her exchanges with Deborah and Robin.

  “So,” David asked. “This Robin is sweet on Reid?”

  “Maybe more. They might be an item, or maybe Robin’s just lusting for Reid. Connor and Zienuc heard she has the hots for him from one of the show’s writers, plus Robin just loves to talk about him. Also feels guilty toward Deborah. Says she’s emotionally fragile and forgives too easily. Alex thinks Deborah’s one of those wives who turns a blind eye.”

  “For how long?” David said skeptically.

  “She loves him.” Jill shrugged, still feeling exhausted, but her heart had started a slow, heavy thud. Anxiety overriding fatigue, she realized.

  “You should have seen Deborah’s face when she was on the phone with him. Like, he’s upset, home and miserable on the bed, and he’s the victim. That’s how she sees it. She knows he’s screwed around before, and said, emphatically, ‘he always comes back to me.’ Said they’d been through their bad time like other bad times and were back to happy. Gardening, even, on some roof garden they have. Can you picture them composting together?”

  “No.”

  “Gee, I can’t either.”

  “So this Robin…uh, wait. Wylie’s romance with Jody…”

  “Was in January. If there is anything with Robin, there’ve been revolving-doors women to soothe Reid’s pain: Jody during his Deborah troubles, then may-be” – Jill dragged out the word – “Robin during his Jody troubles.”

  “These people have too much time on their hands.”

  “Oh yeah. Remember Jody calling it an everybody sleeps with everybody business?”

  “They’re all insane.”

  “Definitely.” The heart kept up its slow, heavy thud. Jill felt it in her chest, her throat. “But Wylie a murderer? A psycho killer?”

  Tightly, she recounted overhearing about Reid’s lawyer. Tuck Hemmer, celebrity guy. “It must look bad,” she said as they rounded a corner. “The cops love the profile of a philanderer trying to save his marriage by getting rid of the girl. That fits better than - here’s another name - Jay Arender, some lawyer at the Wylies’ firm who didn’t like Jody. Really didn’t like her.”

  “Jay who?”

  “Arender. Deborah called him a dweeb who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Plus there was never anything romantic between him and Jody. Ditto nothing she ever did that would hurt his career. They just hated each other. Deborah didn’t seem to know why.”

  The heart thudded painfully. Anxiety hurts. “Oh - and Celie’s attack?” Jill blurted on, speaking tensely, too fast. “Alex said the killer didn’t get bloody because he killed Celie from behind. Chased her, yanked her down backwards to the bricks, and kept stabbing from behind her head. Tried to make it look the work of a maniac.”

  “Sounds like someone who knew a lot about homicide. A former cop, maybe?”

  “That’s what Alex and Kerri said. They definitely like Reid Wylie for this.”

  They walked. Jill watched David frown thoughtfully at the floor. His expression was like the detectives’ when they scribbled their notes.

  “By the way,” she added, balling her fists. “Robin said Deborah has a bad back. Sciatica, pain down her right leg. She probably wouldn’t be up for chasing or attacking anyone, much less hacking and stabbing-”

  “We’re almost there,” David shushed. “Little people ahead.”

  Jesse was hungry and cranky when they walked in.

  “I swear he can tell time,” a night childcare nurse enthused as they lifted him up, tried to cheer his pouty, tearful face. “He saw other families eating with their kids, but he waited, wouldn’t eat, kept looking at the clock, seriously.”

  “I do that. He mimics,” Jill said, watching Jesse’s little features finally break into a three-baby-teeth grin as David hugged him. “I promise, he can’t tell time yet.”

  “Coulda fooled me.” The woman smiled and bent to another toddler running from her exhausted parents with a pickle she wasn’t supposed to eat. “Hey Maya, you don’t really want that. Mommy has a cookie for you.”

  The cookie worked. Maya plopped down on the rug with it as David and Jill greeted her parents – two pathology residents - and spread their picnic blanket next to theirs.

  “Don’t mind me,” said Maya’s mother Renee Fitch with her cheeks bulging. “I’m wolfing this ‘cause I’m on call tonight. Surgical specimens and tissue biopsies are gonna be galloping.”

  “We’re on call too,” David said.

  Jill grimaced, “Sleep? Ha, what’s that?” The heart was still pounding. Had speeded up, even, as if anticipating something she hadn’t grasped. Something was coming. Another shoe was going to drop. It was just a feeling she had, growing stronger. The heart knows what the mind doesn’t know yet. Some philosopher said that. Jill had once known who, but her frantic brain was tired; wouldn’t go there.

  “Eat fast and nap,” Renee Fitch was telling them. “If you’re on call you should grab every sleep chance you can.”

  David smirked that they’d napped during Grand Rounds, and the four commiserated, discussing strong coffee and sharing Bounty wipes on their little Messy Eaters plunked in the middle.

  Picnic dinner was a tradition David had started. Six months ago he had arrived, flushed from running and late after a delivery, carrying a small blanket and a bulging plastic bag. “Dinner,” he had grinned, holding up the bag. “Grabbed sandwiches from one of the machines. We’re going to eat as a family here.”

  It caught on. Soon others started bringing throw-sized blankets and big rolls of Bounty – also David’s idea. Their take-out was delivered to the downstairs Information desk and brought up by orderlies.

  Great system, a chance to be like normal families. The only problem, Maya’s dad Ted complained, is that the “tods” – what he called toddlers – were starting to refuse the baby mush that Childcare made for them. “See? Maya’s back to clamoring for the pickle.”

  “So let her take a bite,” David said. “She’ll hate it.”

  From the Childcare suite’s staff desk Jill had brought three orders of Chinese chicken and broccoli, no spice. She’d cut up Jesse’s into tiny pieces, which he was smooshing together with a spoon in his right hand and the fingers of his left hand. Sucking on his left hand’s fingers, too, trying to keep them clean. Why? The stickiness bothered him? He was trying to keep his overalls clean?

  Probably the stickiness.

  “Um!” he squealed happily, rubbing his tummy.

  “Yum indeed,” Jill smiled, bolting her food like David and wiping Jesse’s squish-smeared face. He grabbed the Bounty from her and comically scrubbed his own face. An independent little move for a child still so young.

  Ted Fitch whined, “Well jeez, you can’t eat chicken and broccoli every night. I want pastrami, and pickles - but that stuff’s not good for the tods.”

  Jesse looked at him, and his eyes lit.

  He hunched forward, placed both little hands on the blanket before him, and piped, “Wibbit, wibbit…”

  The adults stared at him.

  “Those are frog sounds,” Ted said, mystified.

  “Could he have thought you said toad?” Jill was equally mystified.

  “He doesn’t know toad.” David’s round eyes went from Jesse to Jill. “Does he?”

  Renee Fitch’s phone beeped.

  “Breast biopsy ne
eded stat,” she said, hanging up, grabbing a muffin and getting to her feet. “Surgeons waiting, can’t keep the patient anesthetized.” She kissed Ted and little Maya, waved, and ran out.

  Then David’s phone chirped. It was Alex. Jill’s heart kicked hard as she heard the detective’s voice.

  “Can Jill meet us? We want to hear more about her encounters at Jody’s. She said she recorded those conversations.”

  “Right,” David said.

  “Does she have, like, forty-five minutes? An hour?”

  Jill met David’s eyes and nodded.

  He quick-scrolled his phone for everyone’s schedules. Nothing happening at the moment. Older residents like Woody, Sam, George Mackey and Jim Holloway were on hand, plus the usual compliment of interns.

  “I can spring her for a bit,” David said into the phone.

  “Great. We’ll have a patrol car pick her up. Use the siren. Have her back fast.”

  “Where are you?”

  “The morgue. Jarrett autopsy’s done. It’s pretty awful.”

  This was it. The something else Jill had felt coming. The next shoe dropping. Somewhere down deep, she’d been obsessing about Alex telling her, in the cab, “Celie’s autopsy will tell us more.” She had known this call would come. Realized in this moment that she’d also wanted to see Celie. Wanted to touch her hand. Tell her, I’m so sorry…

  Still, a jolt of panic hit.

  Seconds later, she was hiding her fear, hugging Jesse ‘bye for now, heading with David to the elevators.

  “Be careful,” he kept saying as the car dropped.

  They were hugging, alone in the car with Jill’s arms around his neck, her eyes closed and her face pressed to his warmth. She was reassuring him – whispering, “Yes, yes” – as his phone went off again.

  Holloway wanted his help with twins, both of them breech.

  19

  New York City’s Medical Examiner was located on East 26th Street, off First Avenue. The outside looked like any city-owned building – glass doors, dimly lit concrete entrance - but step inside and the change hit you. Chilly even in the vestibule, and that was before descending to the cold, depressing basement.