A CHILD MADE TO ORDER: gripping psychological suspense

by Piotr Ryczko

  She had not even remotely been anywhere near revealing her secret. And now, this washed-out loser had dissected her to pieces and made fun of it. How long had he known? Had he told anyone else?

  “Come on. What else could be the reason?” he said. She wanted to bash in his purplish alcoholic’s face, shriek at him at the top of her lungs. But the words remained as impotent as ever. And her anger dissipated into silent agony.

  “Do you plan on telling him?” He was making an attempt to reach out to her, to put her at ease, she could feel that. But Viola didn’t want a confessional, and even if she did, not with this man.

  “Relax, he won’t hear a thing.”

  The damage was done. Her senses folded in on her as she hurried to raise the necessary walls around herself.

  She had always thought she would be able to tell Ronny the truth at some point in time. But right now, it had become obvious she never would.

  And it was not because she was afraid he would find out her secret. It was also not because she would panic if he left her. Although that was highly probable. It was because her pain was hers to suffer. This pain strengthened her, motivated her. Made her into what she was now. It made her angry. And that gave her power. It built up an inner resolve, and a drive to push herself beyond exhaustion. To abuse herself and others, if needed. It made her a success.

  Most of all, it erected the armour she needed to survive. The only way she would be safe.

  No.

  She would never share. With anyone.

  She yanked her necklace from Pål’s fingers and wrapped it over her neck.

  Screw it.

  Chapter 13

  Saturday, 13th February 2016

  Early morning

  The closer she got to the clinic, the more her stomach clenched into a knot. They had driven for two hours straight to reach the tiny town of Gjøvik.

  When they arrived, Viola was greeted with a ghost town. It would be hard to find a more private place than this. Perfect for any business that wanted to keep its affairs somewhat discreet.

  Pål’s ubiquitous presence in the car had a strange effect on Ronny. Rarely did her partner have any problem with people. His medical practice called for a lot of patience and, above all, heart. After having his own practice for close to fifteen years, he had displayed both of those qualities in bucket loads. So why did Viola’s senses scream that the two of them wanted to trash each other at first sight?

  This was the first time she had seen Ronny give off such a vibe. Was it because of the circumstances and the danger she was putting everybody in? Or was there something else that she was missing and Ronny’s sensitivity detected?

  By the time they had arrived at their destination, Viola was certain that given just a little more time together, these two guys would maim each other. And not a single word spoken.

  When they got out of the car, Ronny grabbed Viola by the arm, then dragged her aside.

  “Viol. Did you smell his breath today? Is that vodka?” he whispered to her while watching Pål. Viola realised it was even worse than she initially thought. Ronny’s eyes were flooded with angst. But whether Pål was drunk or not was actually irrelevant at this moment.

  “Now you are imagining things. Pål is a pro.” Her feeble attempt to defend Pål didn’t carry much weight. But the truth was that she was prepared to go into that place even if Pål was too wasted to open his laptop.

  “Pro? Your pro protection back there is half drunk. It’s bad enough you threw away your chance at the Middle East. You want to do time as well?” He stressed the last words, as if that would finally knock some sense into her.

  So she stopped and assessed how nervous Ronny was. She realised that if she was going inside that place, she would need support. From both of these men. That meant Ronny had to accept this.

  “Hon. Please. This will be okay. Trust me,” she whispered in order to calm him down. But even this backfired. Ronny just shook his head in dismay and threw another glance at Pål, who returned one of his twitchy smiles. Viola noticed their exchange and immediately felt Ronny’s trust evaporate even further.

  “Viol. You know how I feel about all of this… But this surveillance thing? Is that even legal? Are you sure about this?” He voiced his gnawing concern.

  She succumbed to guilt once again. She knew how far he had stretched himself, just so she could be here. He had done this without questioning her motives or the real danger of this operation. This was a huge debt she would need to settle. If she got out of this thing in one piece, that is.

  She knew further words were useless, they would only aggravate. So instead of offering empty assurances, she slid closer to him, then hugged into his chest. Soothed his nerves with her quiet breath.

  He quickly fell silent.

  Morning

  Viola had prepared herself mentally. She had seen way too many strange fertility clinics. Including one straight from a Dickensian novel. So she had reduced her expectations to a minimum, especially her imagination which could easily procure some flight of a nightmare.

  But as they approached the clinic, she winced at the unexpected sight of the facade. Her humblest expectations were pulverised as she eyed a grey and dirty complex of flats that had been transformed into a structure that screamed anonymity. These buildings had been built for middle-class families in Norway during the sixties and seventies, but since then, had been largely abandoned or simply torn down. And from the looks of this place, it just begged to receive this treatment. It was the last sort of place one would go to make a baby.

  As they entered the premises, things went from bad to tragic. They were greeted by the clinic’s waiting room.

  Viola was all too familiar with IVF waiting rooms. The best ones she had attended had clearly taken the patients’ experience into consideration in their designs. The walls had been built with everyone’s privacy in mind, either curved or shielded. Given that there was always a lot of waiting involved, it made the whole experience so much nicer and intimate.

  But the space in this clinic was as stifling as a Hitchcock movie. Every couple was crammed together, practically on top of each other. The chairs were facing each other, so there was nowhere else to look than into each other’s eyes. You simply had no other choice than to wallow in the desperation of the couples opposite you.

  Viola’s train of thought was interrupted by an older grey-haired woman. She scuttled out to greet a couple just entering the waiting room. The older woman was clearly a member of staff from the clinic, dressed in a white medical gown.

  The couple went with the doctor. But the thing that really struck Viola was how the woman was playing all her emotional strings to make them feel at home. With their Armani and Valentino branded clothes, and their native English, they were treated by the greying doctor as if they were A-list celebrities. Then the doctor pampered and wooed them through one of the doors and into the room behind it.

  And that’s when Viola heard the receptionist yell at the top of her lungs.

  “Miss Viola Voss, Miss... Voss?” Every couple turned their heads towards the receptionist who was shrieking out Viola’s name. Everyone’s eyes scattered towards her.

  Her whole body froze in shock. She couldn’t feel more exposed. What happened to calling out only the first initial of the surname to preserve privacy?

  Viola threw a glance at Ronny, who stood beside her.

  Chapter 14

  Viola looked over at the CEO of InviNordica, Magda Thorsten, as the woman toured them around the facilities. This was the same grey-haired doctor she had seen in the waiting room.

  Now that Viola had the chance to inspect Magda closer, her impression was even less favourable. The woman was in her late fifties, but Viola could immediately tell Magda did everything she could to stop that clock. Nose job, cheek job, brow job, any kind of job. All done tastefully, so they wouldn’t draw undue attention to themselves.

  Viola sensed this woman was multifaceted, but however much she tried
to look below the surface, she couldn’t find any one of those facets to be genuine. Just like the surgical incisions dealt to her body, Magda’s character seemed to be a front. An attractive front, but a pretence all the same.

  Magda did her best to smile, and with an alarming frequency. But her lavish grin resembled more a rehearsed tic than a genuine feeling, something that challenged her smoothed-out wrinkles into an action they just couldn’t handle.

  The woman had used the better part of an hour giving Viola and Ronny a tour around the clinic. And by now Viola felt worn, as Magda had carried on incessantly about the company’s philosophy and goals.

  “Our focus is on infertility treatments, which, naturally, carry great responsibility towards future parents. Our success stories speak for themselves. Where other clinics offer IVF at a thirty-five percent success rate, we stretch up to fifty-five percent.” She flashed her grin one more time, just to make sure her last words reached them. And just as quick as it appeared, it vanished behind another one of Magda’s masks.

  “Plus, as an added bonus, we throw in a PGD, that’s Pre-Implantation Diagnosis, for 256 hereditary diseases. Add to that the bonus of the all-inclusive package, and we double that amount to over 500 diseases. I mean... Now... Be truthful to yourselves.” Magda stopped and eyed Ronny and Viola, just to see if they were laser-focused on her.

  “Can you put a price tag on your child’s health?” She rounded off her grand finale with a compassionate glance meant to underline the preciousness of the company’s goals.

  If Viola ever heard a sales pitch, this was it. She just couldn’t understand how this woman could reduce this place – what they did here – to numbers and statistics. How could Magda think of the women here like that? Every one of them cherished hopes beyond anything that could be reasonably measured. Many of them were willing to give up their lives to have a shot at just one successful IVF cycle ending in a childbirth.

  If this place was capable of delivering on their promises, they had a duty towards these women. But what did they get instead? A street pimp pushing the hottest wares.

  * * *

  “Come on. She is a car saleswoman! And you are her next big sale.” He summed it all up as he faced her with alarmed eyes.

  Viola and Ronny stood alone in the hall.

  She knew he was right, dead on in his assessment, because he was voicing all of her own doubts. She had tried her best to find something positive about the place, or the woman in charge, but she came up empty. This place existed solely to lure wealthy and gullible suckers with unfulfilled dreams into plunking some of their hard-earned cash into a wishing well.

  But even if she shared Ronny’s hesitation, this wasn’t the time to voice that out loud.

  “I think you are way off base on this, Ron. I think she is doing what she believes in. Believe me, I’ve seen a lot of hustlers in my work, but I am a hundred and ten percent sure that woman is the genuine article.” Viola said this with such conviction, Ronny’s face flattened with shock. It was obvious he was trying to figure out if Viola was lying, or was simply out of her mind.

  But before he could respond, Magda came running towards them.

  “Ready for the tests?” She sent them both a warm smile and waved them towards the diagnostics room.

  She tried to wave away his concern, simply because she knew she needed her answers. More than anything. But did she need them more than their relationship? More than the man who loved her? Her mind raced for a compromise. Anything that would ease her conscience.

  “Ron, you are right. It wouldn’t be right of me. You go,” she whispered to him softly enough so Magda wouldn’t hear her.

  “Me go? What about you?” Viola saw he wanted to yell at her, shake some sense into her but, instead, he tempered his voice.

  “I gotta stay.” She stated this as a simple fact. Something that could not be overruled in any way.

  Magda eyed them, trying to decipher what was going on. Finally, Ronny just sighed and nodded to Viola.

  “If you are staying, I am staying,” she heard him say, and the words resonated for quite some time in her heart.

  Chapter 15

  Noon

  They had explained to her in great detail that counting the number of follicles and measuring their size was important. At least that’s what they had told her during the ultrasound of the uterus. Despite this, it had been quick. Way too quick.

  And now, as she sat in the adjacent room, the psychological profile dragged on way past the two-hour mark. She couldn’t fathom how the ultrasound, supposedly the staple of any IVF treatment, got barely ten minutes, yet now she was being grilled, assessed, norm-referenced, cross-checked with never-ending checklists, tests and surveys. Viola didn’t feel like a woman considering IVF; she felt like a child who had a brain disorder.

  The questions were endless. What was she attached to most? What would be the easiest thing to give up in her life? Was she prepared to stay away from home for long periods of time? How long? Did she miss her family? What were her ties with the outside world? What did her friends circle look like? How far would she go with the treatment? Was she prepared for compromises, medical trade-offs, unforeseen side effects? And was she ready for a life that they referred to, rather cryptically, as the middle ground? Everything about this woman jarred Viola. And it struck her, this wasn’t a psychological assessment. This was a carefully prepared checklist to see if she fit the bill.

  However jarred she felt, she had more urgent things to take care of. She had not seen a trace of Marianne anywhere. And this conversation was leading her nowhere.

  So, Viola thought it appropriate to put on some more blatant lies about her past. Including her knowledge about the treatment.

  “Childlessness is easily curable nowadays, isn’t it? Does your in vitro come with a sixty-eight percent success rate, or is that someplace else?” Viola planted her hooks and put on a stupid grin, then waited for a response. Maybe this rare amount of ignorance would draw out some hard facts about this place. Maybe even about Marianne.

  But from the look of the shrink’s face, all it did was gather pity.

  Still, Viola wouldn’t be deterred so easily. She threw everything at the older woman. The dumber and more outrageous, the better.

  “You see, I’ve heard it’s a walk in the park, a twenty-minute treatment, right? Right! And you have, like, all these guarantees, don’t you?”

  But the questions didn’t stick. The older woman wouldn’t reveal anything about the clinic, or whom they treated. Instead, her pity was turning into annoyance.

  Viola realised she needed to up her tactics, bring out the heavy ammunition. And what better way than to give the female doctor exactly what she wanted?

  “You know... if fulfilment is a kid’s unconditional love for me, how would I feel about not ever receiving any of that? And how do the other women, you know, handle this, get through this?” Viola whispered in a subdued tone. Maybe this would do.

  The psychologist flinched at Viola’s exposure, sensing she was finally getting through to her.

  “With the right help, anything is possible, Miss Voss.”

  The woman glowed with comfort, not even remotely sensing that Viola’s hook had worked. Viola saw the opening immediately and prepared the knock-out. This would need way more skilful acting. But who was she fooling? She didn’t need to act. It just so happened she was telling the truth.

  “You know, after I lost my second one – I am ashamed now – but I really felt an inner... bleeding. I couldn’t stop it. It filled all of me. Everything inside me. And I considered, you know, hurting myself. After that, I said fu... sorry. From then on, I was kinda prepared to do anything. Anything it takes!” She blurted everything out in one go. And could hardly contain herself as she uttered these words. Her body began to quiver, spasm itself to that pain, and her eyes blurred into tears.

  Maybe the intention was to lie, to fool that woman into some answers, or so Viola told herself. But emotions
seeped out from her pores, clawed at her mind, just as if Markus had passed away yesterday.

  “And now? How do you feel now?” the shrink whispered under her nose, fully engaged by the truth on display.

  “Now… I don’t know. Maybe even more so?” She could hardly contain her tears.

  And as her eyes met the shrink’s, their connection was on a whole new level. The older woman moved closer to Viola, intent on listening, then glanced into Viola’s bleary eyes. By now, she was all vested in Viola, ready to comfort her in any way she possibly could. And maybe even share a secret or two.

  “Hon, I know exactly how you feel. With the right dedication, anything is possible, my dear.”

  “You know. I am afraid my body won’t listen. And it shames me to such an extent, I feel... well, worthless. What if your IVF won’t work? Would you still be able to help me?” Viola pushed in for the final reveal. If she would get anything from this woman, this was her best option.

  And as the psychologist heard the last words, something must have blared off an alarm signal, because she pulled back her body, and with it the trust she had placed in Viola.

  “Miss Voss, we treat only infertility here. Nothing else.” The older woman punched something in on her tablet, and reapplied that familiar grin onto her face.

  “Thank you. We are done!”

  * * *

  Was it all in vain? Viola’s eyes darted around the halls, as she tried to get a glimpse of Marianne. She had never met the blogger in person, and maybe that was why, after such an arduous search, the whole thing had grown way out of proportion. Marianne had become an apparition, a hallucination that had seeped through Viola’s thoughts, day and night, for the last three years. And just like a wraith, her presence was most tangible for Viola, beneath her skin and within her mind, yet Viola was sure she would never look into her eyes, touch her fingers, or simply say hi.

  Had she done all of this for nothing?

  No. She had to stop thinking like this. She had to remember Marianne’s words. The woman had drilled into her public on several occasions that she was past thirty-two and the quality of her eggs was dropping off like crazy. Her time was running out. She was on the threshold of a cliff with her fertility. And no one in their sane mind would tell her she had real options.