by Remember Me
began positioning it inside the birth canal. Ray stood behind his friend watching the procedure
carefully.
Edward wore full surgical gown attire and a special light over his forehead. He pushed
the clamp deep inside the woman’s birth canal until it reached her cervix. He slowly twisted the
outside screws, opening the clamp. The device slowly enlarged the woman’s birth canal so that
Edward could see clearly to the cervix. The clamp created a two inch diameter opening for
Edward to work with.
“I’ve never seen an instrument like that?” Ray muttered over Edward’s shoulder.
“I designed it myself. It makes the procedure much easier.”
Edward pulled out a small laser and began forcing it towards the cervix. The laser
contained a small optical device attached to a video monitor. Ray had never seen such
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technologies before, and it fascinated him. Ray watched with wonder as Edward inserted another
long device that opened the cervix slightly and placed pressure on the uterus, causing it to
expand.
Edward flipped on a video screen hooked to the optical device. On the screen, Ray could
clearly see the embryo inside the amniotic fluid. With the aid of several oddly shaped tools,
Edward gently separated the sack from the uterine lining and pushed it to the side so he could see
the placenta.
After the placenta came into full view, Edward began running several small catheters into
tissue. Each catheter carried an ultra thin and durable tip which Edward gently placed into
strategically chosen locations of the placenta. Once everything sat in its place, Edward pushed all
the hoses to the side of the canal to clear an exit way for the embryo.
Edward glanced over his shoulder and asked Ray to begin the other devices that he had
warmed up, waiting to go. Ray flipped the switches as asked and the series of pumps began
running as the motors fired up. Edward took a deep breath and told Ray to start the clock.
Edward worked with incredible speed and precision, cutting the edge of the placenta
away from the uterus and cauterizing the bleeding tissues behind him. Ray checked his watch
occasionally, while admiring the skill and precision of his colleague.
In less than a minute, Edward had separated the entire placenta from the uterus and
removed the laser. He quickly inserted a small set of forceps inside the opening. In only seconds
he had collected the severed placenta and embryo inside the sack of protective fluid. He pulled
out a hose and sprayed the inside of the birth canal with lubricant as he carefully removed the
forceps from the woman’s body.
Edward carefully lowered the embryo into the tank centered between himself and the
patient’s bed. The embryo came to rest on a soft membrane inside the tank and Edward wheeled
the tank away from the bed of the woman.
Ray took over with another laser and stopped the bleeding inside the woman’s uterus.
The two worked simultaneously, Edward concentrating on attaching more hoses to the placenta
of the uterus.
Edward watched the monitoring devices carefully as he injected several drugs into a
special membrane serving the embryo. By the time Ray had finished with his patient, he turned
and looked at the clock, noticing that the time had now passed.
“Did you make it in time?” Ray asked with excitement.
“The embryo is still responding,” uttered Edward with pessimism. “The heart rate is
slightly down, but I expected that to happen. The biggest test will be whether it can survive the
shock in the change of environments. That could show up in a few minutes, or a few weeks,”
explained Edward.
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“So the child is still alive?”
“Oh yes, in fact, that was my fastest time ever,” exclaimed Edward. “I’ve practiced on
several models, but this was much simpler. How is the hemorrhaging in your patient?”
“It looks like we’ve stopped it,” answered Raymond. “These lasers are great.”
“They’ll change the face of medicine,” Edward agreed.
“Should I remove the clamps?”
“Yes, go ahead. Make sure you rinse well with the sterilized solution. The normal
prescription for antibiotics that you give your patients should be fine. You can also prescribe
something to aid in the expulsion of the uterine lining. She might experience a little pain from
the stretching created by the clamp.”
“I’ll take care of any problems she might feel,” remarked Ray. “Right now, I need to
clean her up and roll her back in the other room. Will you need anymore help here?”
Edward stared at his long time dream intently. He had not heard his colleague’s latter
question. The sight of his device supporting the small life enveloped his every thought. He
carefully monitored the embryo for any sudden problems while checking the catheters for leaks.
Ray gave the man his silence to work while he went forward and removed the clamps
from his patient. He checked the hallway for any newcomers and wheeled the unconscious
woman back to her original room. There he administered several more drugs including one to
bring her slowly to consciousness and then returned to the room where Edward remained
working.
“Well, Ed, is it successful?”
“Yeah, Ray,” answered the startled man. “It seems to have gone off without any
problems.”
“So what do you do now, Edward?”
“I expect the placenta to begin deteriorating in a matter of days. The membranes will
probably break down and stop functioning within a week. By that time, I’ll have her completely
hooked up to the device. The only thing linking the child to the machine will be the umbilical
cord. I’ll transfer the child to a larger tank when I get back home to my private lab, and that’s
where she’ll finish her cycle of growth.”
“She’s a baby girl then?”
“It appears that way.”
“Will you need any more help?” Ray asked, looking the child over through the glass.
“I just need to seal up the tank to keep things sterile until I reach my lab. Then I’ll just
need a hand taking the instruments back to my van and loading everything inside.”
“Isn’t the child going to be extremely susceptible to disease now?”
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“She would be,” Edward began. “But I’ve collected antibodies from donors when I used
to work with Dr. Evans. We used the technique all the time for premature children. I’ll just start
administering the antibodies through my device. The child will be just fine.”
“Well, I’m going to clean up around here while you seal the tank. Let me know when
you’re ready.”
Ray cleaned things throughout both of the rooms they had used. In less than ten minutes,
Edward had everything ready to go in his van, parked at the back door of the clinic, and Ray
helped him secure things down. Ray watched as Edward drove off down the road, hurrying to get
back to his laboratory.
He returned to the room where Heather laid, slowly regaining her consciousness. He
checke
d her vital signs over and made sure no new hemorrhaging had occurred. He glanced back
at her face and noticed that her eyes were open.
“How are you feeling?”
“Sore,” she answered. “And really tired. Is it gone?”
“Yeah, it’s removed. Would you like to take a look?” he asked, knowing what she would
reply.
“No.”
“All right then,” he uttered quietly. “You get some rest. I need to keep you around for
observations for a little while. You should be able to go home in a few hours.”
“Can’t I leave right now?” she asked.
“No,” Ray answered. “You had some heavy bleeding, and I gave you some pretty strong
drugs. You need to wait for them to wear off. With your blood supply down, it will take some
time. Is somebody waiting to take you home?”
“No.” she answered.
“I can’t let you drive all that way home until the drugs are completely worn off. Why
don’t you just lay down and get some rest. It will take a while for you body to regain it’s
strength.”
“I feel really sore.”
“Wait until you have to squeeze out a full sized baby,” Ray explained. “There’s always
some soreness.”
Ray left his patient to let her get some rest. He walked to the back of the clinic where his
office sat and began filling out her paperwork. He felt relieved that the event had passed. His
stomach had bothered him all week worrying that something would go wrong.
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Chapter Six
Margaret sat on the living room sofa, her head lain back, staring up at the ceiling. Her
mom wasn’t due home for several hours and she had the whole house to herself. Her thoughts
wandered as they always did and she soon found herself in a deep trance.
The family portrait hung on the wall behind her. Looking back at the picture, her vision
began to blur and the images grew hazy. Margaret noticed something as the images of her family
melted together. She stood out like a sore thumb. The rest of her family had darker complexions
and brown hair. Margaret, with her honey blonde hair and fair skin, looked nothing like anyone
else in her family.
Margaret’s thoughts drifted further and she found herself questioning whether she really
was a blood relative, or if they had adopted her like an orphan. She had shrugged off the
documents from her birth as a joke, but during the past few days, realized that joking around
didn’t fit her father’s character. Now she questioned whether her parents had tried to cover up
her true identity because they had adopted her.
Something else bothered Margaret as well, the encounter with Cheryl Penn at the mall
and the fact that Edward Penn had actually existed once. She had never heard her parents talk
about the Penns before. Now, with the legitimacy of Edward Penn proven, the chance that there
were secrets in her past seemed much more possible. If her father had involved himself with
Edward Penn in the past, she wanted to know how.
Margaret looked over at the clock, wondering if she dared to sneak through her father’s
files again. She had a large window of time before anyone would return home. Without any more
thought, Margaret jumped up and started down the hallway to the study. In just a few minutes,
she had opened up her file to examine it closer.
As she looked through the three papers carefully, she realized another interesting finding.
All the other files contained medical records for the children and parents, but hers were missing.
She started to wonder what the acronym L.S.A.U. stood for. She read the memo included with
the file a second time, wondering what Dr. Penn practiced. She looked through the other files to
see if her father kept any documents on the man, but found nothing.
Margaret sat back in the large reclining chair where her father so often sat. She spun
around on the swivel chair looking the office over for any more information. Directly behind the
desk, she found something she thought seemed odd. She had never paid much attention to
anything in the office before, but this definitely stood out.
Her father had several file cabinets in his home office. Each had a label on the front
indicating the contents of the drawer. The small file cabinet behind the desk had the label
Research on it. Her father, however, had never done any research. His practice embodied the
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majority of his time and she had never known of anything he had worked on as research. She
decided to take a look.
Margaret searched through the desk for another key for this separate file cabinet. She
located the lone key at the very back of the drawer, hidden from the others. She spun around in
the chair and tried the key with definite success.
She pulled the drawer open and found it full of all sorts of files. At the front of the drawer
sat a file label with the words “Life Sustaining Artificial Uterus (L.S.A.U.)” on it. Margaret felt
boggled as she stared at the drawer of information, not knowing where to begin.
A series of laboratory notebooks, all similar to one another, sat at the front of the drawer.
She picked out the first book and opened it up. It soon became clear to Margaret that this book
was part of a volume of books written by Dr. Edward Penn. She finally felt as if she had found
something substantial.
Each book had the title of the project listed under it and Edward had outlined the volumes
and the information in each of the books. A separate book sat at the front and included a table of
contents. This book contained an introduction to Edward’s work and explained the purpose of
the study. Margaret sat back and read part of the introduction, skipping to the most interesting
parts.
“...It is my belief that life is a gift from a higher power in the universe, which should be
cherished and held dear. Throughout history, humankind has shown its disregard for this
cherished gift through infinite wars and other destruction of human lives.
I have decided it is time for me to take a side in a silent war which has gone on for
decades, a war which helpless children are unable to fight on their own. They wage a battle to
fulfill the dream their maker had for them. I present this project as a weapon for those children to
use in their constant battle for life.
It is my hope that this experiment might extend the boundaries of science and the human
mind. I ask only that society look at this idea without prejudice towards the methods used during
the experiment. I know that something as right as this is destined to succeed, and will work to
make this dream a reality.
If but one human life might be saved through the use of what I study, then all my efforts
will not be in vain. By understanding the developmental patterns of the human embryo and fetus,
I hope that we might learn even more about the processes key to life. These findings might also
aid in the research for increasing survival statistics for premature children. I feel that any
advancements made in either of these areas are advancements made for all humankind.
The following books which I have written list the detailed findings of my research and
the developments I have made in designing the first artificial uterus. It is specifically outlined for
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review by all the fields of science and medicine and is aided with photographs whenever
possible...”
Margaret set the book down beside her and dug through the other books before her. Most
of the books contained technical data and information attained through the research of Dr. Penn.
He presented the information in such a fashion that she could not understand much of what he
had written.
Near the middle of the books, she encountered detailed diagrams and plans for a large
chamber which could house unborn fetuses. There were also schematics showing the vast
number of monitoring devices hooked up to the chamber and how he had connected everything.
The notebooks contained many pictures of the device as Dr. Penn assembled it. The more
she read about the device, the more interested she became. Her thoughts intensified as she tried
to figure out just how her father fit into the entire project, and how he had associated her with it.
She moved through the books quickly, searching for some tidbit of information
describing her role in the project. She felt amazed to find pictures of a child hooked up to the
device in later books. The child looked incredibly small in the pictures and extremely delicate.
She moved quickly through these, trying to find out what role her father played in everything.
She located the last of the books in the volume and searched through it. About half way
through the book, she found what she had set out after. The handwriting and the style of the
journal changed considerably on the day that Margaret always considered her birthday. Her
father had signed this particular entry. She skipped through the entry quickly, avoiding the
technical information, and finally locating the heart of everything.
“I arrived at the home of Dr. Penn this afternoon with deep sadness and anticipation of
what had become of his experiments. I found the subject to still be in very good condition. She is
a beautiful baby girl and according to Dr. Penn’s notes, is close to the end of the development
inside the chamber.
It was Edward’s life long dream to see this project to completion. I have now learned that