Embryo 1: Embryo

by JA Schneider

  “For God’s sake, lady,” a man leaned out and yelled.

  She reached the other side and headed west on Thirtieth Street. At the steps of her brownstone she paused, thinking, how shabby and old it looks. She mounted the steps, pushed open the door that never locked. The vestibule smelled of sour cooking odors. An old baby carriage was pushed against the wall. Ready to give away or have stolen? Baby grown?

  She closed her eyes and thought, if I see another baby thing I’ll lose it.

  The first landing was dimly lit. She rounded the corner and trudged up the second flight. Bare carpeting, dead light bulb, dark …

  Lost in her thoughts, she did not hear the door open below; did not hear the footsteps coming up the first flight, the second, until a floorboard creaking behind her caused her to wheel in fright.

  In a blur she saw a darkened figure in a dark shirt and jeans come toward her; suffered a moment of blinding panic before she recognized the face and felt her body go limp.

  “David!” she cried. “Oh, David!”

  Unsmiling, he folded her into his arms as she crumpled, sobbing, to his chest. “It’s all right,” he whispered, holding her. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Her hot tears soaked through his shirt. He looked up, studying the two facing doors on the landing above.

  “Let’s get inside,” he said.

  He pushed the door closed, flipped the slide bolt and door chains. Then he turned. For a long moment they stared at each other. “Jill,” he said softly. The apartment seemed bathed in bronze. From a window overlooking the street, the setting sun angled a beam of light across the faded carpet, an old couch. Through a narrow door, he could see the bed.

  She went to him. Her arms went around his neck as he pulled her to him, folding her tight in his arms. She gasped as he kissed her. Desire hit them both like a tidal wave.

  Later, she would not remember if he carried her or if they walked to the bed. That part was a blur. The magic that she did recall was the sudden heaviness of him, of his strong arm sliding under her naked waist sending a shudder of pleasure through her. She thought her heart would burst. Again and again she called out his name as the ecstasy mounted, as he kissed her and put his stubbly cheek into the softness of her shoulder, in his driving passion clinging to her as if he would never let go.

  When it was dark, and they lay there, spent and whispering, David said, “Do you remember what you told me?”

  She was stroking his chest. “When?”

  “The second time.”

  “Oh.” She looked into his solemn, dark blue eyes. “I’m embarrassed,” she said.

  He shifted up on an elbow and looked at her. “Please? I don’t want to think I’m imagining things.”

  His hand over hers was lean and muscular, with red knuckles like an athlete’s. There was also a long scar near his thumb and forefinger; for no reason she thought of a fourteen-year-old experimenting with his jackknife.

  She smiled softly.

  “I told you I loved you,” she murmured. “But that’s crazy, isn’t it? It’s too fast.”

  He gave a faint smile. “I fell for you faster.”

  “What? When?”

  “Yesterday morning in the supply closet. When you were screaming at me.”

  It was her turn to twist around and look at him. “Oh David, I was awful to you yesterday. I’m so sorry – ” His smile was sleepy.

  “Forget it,” he said, pulling her down, kissing her brow. “Yesterday was ages ago.”

  And thinking about it, thirty minutes later as she lay under his arm, listening to his heavy, exhausted breathing, she realized that he was right. Yesterday did seem like ages ago.

  There were hundreds of them and they walked across a wide and barren landscape, carrying their babies. Maria Moran was near the front of the line, her eyes unfocused, and she did not hear Jill cry out to her. Desperately Jill tried to force her way through the underbrush. “Maria don’t go!” she shouted, but the women continued to trudge toward a low gray building. Feverishly Jill disentangled her clothes from thorns and began to run. Toward the women, toward the squat building. Over the entrance were the words INFANT SCHOOL. Workers in gray overalls stood before the entrance and smiled reassuringly as they took the babies, one by one, from their mothers. “Follow the red arrow,” said the head worker, gesturing with more smiles toward a path that led to a river. The noise of the rushing water was loud. Gasping, Jill recognized the red arrow, ran faster and caught up to Maria Moran. The earth before the river split open and Maria slid down into it. Jill screamed “No!” but the roaring water drowned out her voice and she woke up, lying perspiring and shivering, in her bed in her room.

  She lay on her back, still hearing water. She pulled the covers over her, and lay and thought, still seeing the dream. The sound of water turned off. David, in the shower. She ached from lovemaking and squirmed to get more comfortable. Dread of the day crept in. Stryker. Moran. Sayers. Stryker again.

  “Rise and shine, Jillie.” David stood over her, dressed and looking unforgivably morning fresh.

  She groaned and threw a pillow over her face.

  David sat on the bed and spoke to the pillow. “Anything broken?”

  He heard a muffled, unhappy voice. “You will be watched very carefully,” Jill mimicked. “I hate that place!”

  Gently, he pulled away the pillow and pulled her up and looked at her, amazed that even in the harsh light of morning she was beautiful. The sheet she clung to only half-covered her nakedness. Her skin was the color of cream, her dark hair fell to her breasts.

  He took her in his arms. “They just love to intimidate interns. Give it time and it will pass.”

  “Sure,” she whispered fiercely. “If I’m a good little intern and wear blinders.”

  He gave a strand of her hair the tiniest yank. “Talk anything over with me.”

  “I know. Before I go running around half-cocked.”

  His silence told her yes.

  But her mind boiled with conflict. If only he would stay here, she thought. If only I didn’t have to face the day. She inhaled, realizing how much she preferred him like this, in jeans and an ordinary blue shirt, his dark hair still a little wet and falling over his brow. It was unbearable to think of him walking into the hospital, changing into his whites, and becoming a crisp resident again. She put her arms around him and squeezed hard. She wanted this moment to last forever.

  “I have to go,” he said.

  She looked at him plaintively. “Six-thirty in the morning! You can’t stay a second longer?”

  He stood. “Nope. Need a head start. The morning’s going to be nonstop surgery.”

  Clutching her sheet, she hopped off the bed and followed him out.

  At the door he said, “Stryker will probably have Ganon spying on you every minute.”

  She twisted a corner of the sheet. “What can I do? The Sayers case has me in pieces.” She caught his look, plunged on. “If I could just find out what happened to her – ”

  “Jill – ”

  “She worked at the museum just up the block. I could go there in my free time, couldn’t I? Ask a few questions? What’s wrong with that?”

  His hand was on the doorknob “Well…” he said dubiously.

  “In my free time! I have some late this afternoon.”

  He put his head to one side, considering. “I suppose what you do with your free time is your business. If it will get this thing off your mind…”

  “And get me back on track. I’ll be a normal intern again!”

  He looked at her uneasily. “Why do I have the feeling I shouldn’t let you out of my sight?”

  She smiled. “Please don’t.”

  He bent and kissed her. “I don’t plan to,” he said.

  18

  “Ready to pop,” somebody said, and Jill in her surgical mask glanced over from the fetal monitor screen.

  They had barely made it to the delivery room. The patient had been brought to the h
ospital only twenty-eight minutes before. In the labor room Jill had to rush the history and physical, assess the labor and check the degree of cervical dilatation.

  At 10:22, Tricia, Jill, and a nurse wheeled the bed from the labor room into delivery. There a second nurse helped Woody Greenberg, already scrubbed, into his surgical gown, while the other three, babbling orders to each other, hoisted the moaning woman onto the table.

  At 10:41, dilatation was a full ten centimeters.

  Woody was excited. “Okay, a couple more good pushes and you’ll have a baby!”

  Tricia hollered, “Go girl!”

  The response of the mother was a loud moan, and a minute later Woody with a hoot delivered an eight pound, one ounce baby girl and placed the howling newcomer across her mother’s belly.

  Jill beamed like everyone else. A normal birth was always a joy. And – secondarily of course – the labor and delivery had gone with unusual speed.

  She now had an unexpected chunk of free time.

  Leaving the delivery area, she got off on the third floor and turned right.

  She passed the radiation therapy suite on her right, and on the left the radioisotope, hematology and chemistry labs. Next came a long stretch of blank wall, followed by a rectangular glass window and the muffled sound of babies. When Goofy, Mickey, and Donald Duck appeared waving on the last door, she figured she was in the right place. Below them were the words, Infant School of Madison Hospital Medical Center, Division of Perinatology Department.

  Jill thought, Stryker thinks sending me down to look at a bunch of well babies is going to have me cooing his praises again.

  Opening the door, she stepped uncertainly inside.

  “Well, hello there!”

  Above the baby babble and the tinny sound of nursery school records, a shrill voice rose to greet her.

  She saw a trim, middle-aged woman moving rapidly toward her: too rapidly, as though she had been watching the door.

  “I’m Corrine Dewitt.” Glancing at Jill’s name tag the woman’s sporty, angular face smiled broadly as she extended a hand. “Doctor Stryker called to say you might be stopping by.” She smiled again. “So you’re the young doctor who’s so interested in our super kids. Well here they are!” Her hand swept the room.

  The walls were painted with bright yellow, blue and red. The blue carpeting was lush, strewn with every imaginable toy. Sweet-voiced attendants hunched individually over each baby and talked, smiled a lot, punched buttons on toys and gesticulated. There were about twenty babies although it was hard to tell; they were all over the place. Crawling, squirming, climbing, sitting…

  Then Jill looked again.

  Near her feet was a blond eight-month-old, lying on his back and operating a pulley. A “teacher,” dressed in a bright purple sweater, kneeled over him and smiled extravagantly as her trilling voice called out: “Pull down the red donut, no sweetheart, not the yellow donut, the red donut…that’s right. Now make the blue ball go up, oh yes, and hit that funny little clown in the orange hat. Ye-e-s, just like that! Oooh, isn’t that funny?”

  Jill stared.

  The clown took his comic little dive, the infant chortled with delight and rebegan the process.

  “Stryker’s Children,” Corinne Dewitt said proudly, looking around. “Every one of them.” She pointed. “That baby would have been born with hydrocephaly, were it not for the fetal surgery performed by Dr. Stryker. And that baby would have had heart valve problems, and that baby’s father’s sperm count was low, so artificial insemination was used.” She droned on, but a peculiar sound caught Jill’s attention.

  “Cow…cow…cow…” An eleven-month-old girl was listening to a mechanical voice repeat the word while an image of a grinning Guernsey glowed before her on a small screen. With her pink barrette secured in her scanty hair, the tot’s face was the picture of concentration as she studied the cow.

  Jill knelt and watched her, then looked up to Dewitt. “Does this thing get any other channels?”

  “Indeed!” Dewitt exclaimed. “There are twenty other animals and the child learns them all” She bent too and said sweetly, “I do believe you’ve seen enough of your cow, Latisha. How about looking at nice Mr. Horse for a while?”

  Dewitt reached to a row of brightly colored buttons, pressed the yellow one marked “forward” and advanced the picture to the image of a horse.

  “No! No!” Latisha protested. Angrily she reached and punched a blue button marked “reverse.”

  As the image of her cow reappeared, she popped her thumb into her mouth and happily resumed watching.

  Dewitt straightened. “They spoil her terribly at home. Her parents had been pronounced incurably infertile by other doctors. So they came to Dr. Stryker for in vitro and – presto!”

  Jill looked around the room. She could not exactly recall the month-by-month schedule of average baby development, but clearly these were not average babies.

  She said, “I understand. They all started out as high-risk pregnancies. And because they turned out okay, their grateful parents bring them here.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But why?” Jill turned to the woman. “They’re alive and well. Why do they have to be geniuses?”

  Dewitt made a gesture. “We might call them geniuses. But the generation they’re going to grow up in won’t. Their world will be one of even more complex technology. The higher their intelligence, the better they’ll be able to cope with that world. And intelligence can be elevated – that is Dr. Stryker’s firm belief. It all depends on how early you begin your, er…”

  “Programming?” Jill said.

  “Teaching,” Corinne Dewitt corrected. “Studies have shown that babies can be taught in utero! You play Mozart and Beethoven loud enough for them to hear. This enhances both their artistic and math abilities, isn’t that amazing?”

  Jill had seen enough and it was getting late.

  She thanked Dewitt and was heading for the door when she felt something tugging at the pants of her scrub suit. She looked. A six-month-old grinned toothlessly up at her. He was in a sitting position. Jill stared, astonished, as he held out a soft red block to her. She bent and took it. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Yeeow!” he grinned back.

  Dewitt, behind her, said, “We teach socialization too.”

  Jill tried to remember. Most babies that age could sit up only a few seconds without support; would not begin to hand you things until…when was it? Forty-eight weeks?

  “That’s Henry,” said Dewitt. “His mother had a four year history of miscarriages before she came to Dr. Stryker.”

  Jill watched as Henry tried to stack the blocks…without getting frustrated. “His parents must think Dr. Stryker’s pretty special,” she murmured.

  “They think he’s a god!” said Dewitt. “These children exist because of him.”

  “Amazing,” Jill said tonelessly. “Well, thanks again.”

  Closing the door in the hall she turned and looked back through the glass. Dewitt still stood over Henry, smiling.

  Jill gave a terse smile back.

  Henry waved.

  Waiting for the elevator, Jill thought.

  There was no denying that those Infant School babies were all medical miracles. And every one of their mothers must have been coddled and monitored carefully throughout her pregnancy.

  She rubbed her chin thoughtfully.

  Such patient care must be dreadfully expensive. Which meant that those babies probably came from upper-class families. Such services would be out of reach for the Maria Morans and Mary Jo Sayers of this world.

  Although the same doctors treated both groups.

  Maybe there were, uh, scholarships?

  My mind is going around in circles, Jill thought.

  The elevator arrived, and she got on.

  19

  “My boyfren’s gonna kill you!” Bonnie Gaines, aged sixteen, sat on the examining table eyeing George Mackey belligerently.

  H
e stared her down. “Look,” he said. “No abortion under any circumstances. That’s a five month viable fetus you’re carrying. The wards here are as good as you’ll find any – ”

  “You mean, have it?” Bonnie screwed up her pimply face. “I wanna have it fixed!”

  Mackey said angrily, “I said no. That’s a child you’ve got there.”

  The girl tried one last, wicked glare and saw that she was getting nowhere.

  “Go fuck yourself!” She slid off the table and pulled a loose-fitting dress over her head. “I thought you were gonna help me! Shit, some doctor!”

  Mackey stepped back in revulsion as the girl stormed out. He could hear her yelling obscenities all the way down the hall.

  She left the building and waddled past the entrance of the geriatric clinic next door, quickening her pace. She hated old people. There was a group of them standing there now, with their aluminum walkers and thick-lensed glasses and no place to go. Just standing there. Staring at her ‘cause they had nothing else to do.

  She gave them wide berth as she passed. Reached the corner and crossed at the intersection, moving as quickly as her bulk would allow. On Nineteenth Street she headed west.

  Not until she was halfway down the block did she become aware of an odd, clicking sound behind her. She stopped and looked. Her lip curled.

  Nothing but some old guy, heading home the same way she was with his aluminum walker. Probably half blind too; he was wearing dark glasses.

  He saw her look at him and smiled crookedly. Gestured amiably and began to shuffle toward her.

  “Shee-it!” He gave her the creeps; seemed to be coming faster.

  She broke into an awkward, rolling trot, thinking, Hah. Maybe this will get rid of the baby. Nearing the end of the block, she slowed to a walk. Turned to look. The old coot was gone. Probably disappeared into one of those doorways she had just passed.

  Good.

  She turned into an alley. It was her usual shortcut home. It was pretty shadowy, even by day, but it got her there in half the time.

  She moved past a stack of crates, the back door of a restaurant, and thick overhanging sumacs. Her eyes were not yet adjusted to the shadows, and she crashed into a garbage can. Cursing, she stopped to rub her knee. That was the trouble with this alley. You never knew where the restaurant was going to throw their –