Embryo 1: Embryo

by JA Schneider

  “What about Arnett? Did you see him too?”

  “Sure. He did the amniocentesis too. I’m thirty-nine, thash why.”

  “I have to hang up now,” Jill said. “Many thanks for your help.”

  “Quite welcome. I might even see you there one of these days.”

  “You’ll be coming back?”

  “Of course I’m coming back. Stryker’s the best. The man is a god. Well, thanks for calling.”

  Jill hung up.

  It was 12:10. She rushed back to her clinic duty.

  Her next free time was a quick trip to the Cytology lab.

  “What I need,” Jill told a technician, reading from her black book, “are the results of some cervical mucous exams.” She gave the names of Tarasov, Moran, Sayers, Hollins, Warner, and Chang.

  The young woman keyed in the six patients’ names, then added the department code, then the code for the cervical mucous test. There was a pause; brightly lit letters scrolled across the computer screen. First the name Tina Tarasov and: CYTOLOGY MEMORY UNIT RECORDS NO SUCH PATIENT OR EXAMINATION.

  “What?” said Jill. “There must be some – ”

  Next streamed the names of Mary Jo Sayers and Mary Hollins:

  MEMORY UNIT RECORDS NO SUCH PATIENT OR EXAMINATION

  “There’s something the matter with your computer,” Jill said tonelessly.

  “Nope. Never sick a day. Here comes the rest.”

  The names Hollins, Warner and Chang appeared. MEMORY UNIT RECORDS NO SUCH…

  “Turn it off.” Jill frowned. “Could any other lab have done this procedure?”

  “Nope,” said the technician. “Only here. Same with Pap smears, breast biopsies, pleural taps, sputum taps to look for lung cancer...”

  Jill said, “Run the names through again for their blood types.”

  “Can’t. For that you’d have to go to Hematology and use their access code. Our access to the main computer bank is limited to cytology data.”

  The main computer bank…?

  “I get it,” Jill said. “And Radiology can only access Radiology’s access code, and so on, right?”

  “Right.”

  It dawned on Jill that the whole hospital computer system was a hoax: a collection of private lines with unlisted numbers, each department protective of its own internal secrets.

  She frowned at the computer. “So only staff cleared for total access can get any info they want?”

  “Yup. Only the top brass have the Master Code. It’s in Ida.”

  “Ida?”

  “International Classification of Diseases Adapted is too big a mouthful, so people just call it Ida. Makes it sound halfway human. Anyway, only the top brass have its Master Code.”

  They walked toward the door. Jill said, “I wonder how somebody could get hold of that Master Code.”

  “Easy,” said the technician, smiling brightly. “Steal it!”

  At 1:30 Jill trooped with all the interns on Grand Rounds led by Willard Simpson. He seemed to be watching her, singling her out every time a difficult question came up. His little piggy eyes registered no surprise if she answered well. He would just nod begrudgingly and lead the group to the next patient. As if he’s keeping a scorecard, Jill thought.

  When rounds were over Simpson called her aside. “Glad to see you’re back on the straight and narrow,” he said primly.

  Jill smiled at him. “Why Dr. Simpson,” she said. “I’m working harder than ever.”

  At 2:45 Jill sat in the anteroom of Clifford Arnett’s office, looking around. Lots of books, framed snapshots, plants, antique lamps. For a moment she stared absently at a thick red and white book on the bottom of a messy pile next to the secretary’s desk, and then she sighed.

  “Do you think Dr. Arnett will be much longer?”

  The woman looked at her watch. “He should be along any minute, but you know how these things go. Three tubal ligations back to back – quite a lot of surgery.”

  “Mmm,” said Jill, stifling a yawn. “That’s a marvelous philodendron there.”

  The secretary beamed. “Huge, isn’t it? In three years it has never failed me. It just keeps growing and growing.”

  …it has never failed me…

  Jill smiled. “So you’re the plant lover.”

  “Well, the doctor too…but, yes, they’re my babies.”

  “It’s too bad about the ficus though, isn’t it?”

  The secretary looked worried. “Not the one in the hall…”

  “Dry as a bone,” Jill said. “When I passed it you could practically hear it crying for water.” She made a pained expression.

  The secretary jumped to her feet. “Oh no! I’ve been so busy, haven’t even thought of it.” She grabbed a plastic watering can and disappeared into an adjoining washroom. There was the sound of splashing water, then she reappeared, trying not to spill.

  “The one by the elevator, right?”

  “Yes, better hurry.”

  The distance to the elevator was about sixty feet, Jill calculated.

  She crossed to the desk, lifted the stack of books and journals and placed them to one side. With trembling hands she got out her black memo book, then opened the red and white International Classification of Diseases Adapted book. “Hello, Ida,” she breathed.

  Toward the front she found the Directory of Access Codes for all Madison Hospital departments.

  She furiously copied just the Master Code.

  Whispering “bye, Ida”, she closed the ICDA book, moved the stack of books and journals back onto it, and pushed the tottering pile back into place.

  She raced to her chair and sat, heart pounding, just as Arnett’s secretary returned, looking bewildered.

  “I watered it,” she said. “But it didn’t look so dry to me.”

  Jill stood. “It’s almost three. Guess I can’t wait any longer. Please tell Dr. Arnett I stopped by?”

  “I’m so sorry,” the secretary said. “Is there any message I can give him?”

  “No thanks. I had something in mind but I’ve worked it out.”

  The secretary smiled. “My, aren’t you an enterprising girl!”

  “We’ll see,” Jill said, and left.

  24

  Where was she?

  David hadn’t seen Jill at lunch and caught just a glimpse of her, before eleven, running like a shot to the clinic.

  Nobody ever ran to the clinic.

  It was now three o’clock. He sprawled in an armchair in the doctors’ lounge checking his schedule sheet…and Jill on it. She had been terrific today, hadn’t missed a minute of conference or ward or clinic duty. Simpson himself had gruffly pronounced her “back to normal, see that you keep her way.”

  But where did she disappear to between things? David looked around at the small group of interns and residents grabbing some down time. They were reading, drinking coffee, or talking quietly. Tricia was curled up asleep in an armchair near him. Ortega dozed on the sagging couch. Neither had slept last night.

  When it was lull time in OB, you learned to grab it – except that Jill…

  His own words came back to him: “I suppose what you do with your free time is your business…”

  So she was making free time by skipping meals? Running around God knows where?

  He felt so torn. Still very shook from last night and what had happened to her. We’d just begun, he thought, and she nearly got herself killed. He had known plenty of women, but had never fallen this hard, this fast.

  Before dozing off Tricia mentioned Jill’s tension during rounds. “She’s going on her nerves,” Tricia said. “So antsy and fidgeting. I’ve never seen her like this.”

  Never? Tricia had known Jill since med school.

  The strange thing was, the hospital’s conventional investigation had turned up nothing so far in those bizarre cases. Jill’s discovery in Pathology was the most dramatic thing yet, but it was far from enough. Those two cases could be freaks…

  He felt a vibrat
ing in his pocket. Found a message from Jill saying that she’d arranged coverage with Ramu Chitkara for the next two hours; she’d be back around five.

  Back from where?

  He swore to himself; hung up; spent the next ten minutes fidgeting and re-playing her words in his head: I’ll be sneakier and more careful, promise.

  It didn’t help. He was a mess.

  Sheri Chang had been reluctant to talk on the phone, but had given a Chinatown address and agreed to meet there. The timing would be perfect, she said. Jill had called at her place of work: a Saint Agnes School where Chang was a teacher. Her pupils, enrolled for the summer, would be getting dismissed by the time Jill arrived. Sheri would wait on the sidewalk.

  The cab dropped Jill, in street clothes again, at crowded, narrow Pell Street. She hurried through the maze of streets, passing signs in Chinese and tinkling chimes and exotic, wonderful-smelling markets. On Doyer Street she found the school. Children streamed out – little girls in plaid skirts and white blouses, boys in navy pants and white shirts.

  Across the lintel read the inscription, St. Agnes School for the Artistically Gifted.

  Chang taught gifted kids?

  Two older women were supervising, and between them stood a pretty young woman who looked to be in her late twenties. She wore a navy blue skirt and filmy white blouse. She kissed several children as they left, and her eyes followed them as they headed down the street.

  Jill approached. “Hello, are you Sheri Chang? I called before. I’m Dr. Raney.”

  They shook hands and Jill followed the teacher back into the building. In a classroom Sheri Chang sat behind her desk and Jill took a chair facing her, turning off her cell phone.

  “I’ve been studying your case.” Jill chose her words carefully. “What is so puzzling about the…outcome is that there was nothing preceding it to indicate trouble. According to your chart, the fetal signs were all normal. Everything seemed normal.”

  Chang’s voice was soft and hesitant. “I’m thirty-six,” she said. She went on haltingly, telling how she and her husband had been married for five years before deciding to have a child. “Separate careers, very modern,” she said ruefully. Jill was about to protest when Sheri Chang’s voice became suddenly stronger.

  “We tried for the next two years but – nothing. Couldn’t get pregnant, so a friend suggested Madison Hospital. The infertility clinic.”

  “Were you Dr. Stryker’s patient?”

  “Yes. He discovered that I had blocked Fallopian tubes, and performed an in vitro fertilization.” A faint smile. “The first time – it worked! I cannot describe to you our joy when we found that the implantation had been successful. That I was pregnant.”

  “I can imagine,” Jill said quietly.

  Sheri Chang folded her hands, as if in prayer. “We have such faith in Dr. Stryker. He did everything - induced my ovulation with hormones, monitored the ultrasound like a mother hen. That man is a god to us. Yes, we grieve, but” – she opened her palms – “at least he proved that we can be fertile! Can you imagine what that means to us?”

  Jill nodded thoughtfully. “You said that he induced your ovulation with hormones. Do you know which ones?”

  “No. He said they were new. The very latest.”

  Mental note, Jill thought. Find out what those drugs were.

  What else seemed wrong? The fact that Chang’s in vitro fertilization had never appeared on her records - like Sunny Warner’s - and that, eyes shining, Chang referred to Stryker as “a god.” Again, like Warner.

  Sheri was now speaking of Simpson and his gene studies, so fascinating; and then, in the same breath, she mentioned the Infant School.

  “The Infant School?” Jill blinked. “You know about that?”

  “Sure. All of Stryker’s children go to the Infant School. They get signed up practically at conception. It’s a privilege” – she looked down – “provided they make it to term.” She looked back up. “Well, we too, some day…”

  Jill stared at her. “Stryker’s children,” she echoed faintly. She felt chilled. “I wasn’t aware that the Infant School was…part of the genetic counseling program. A graduate school, sort of.”

  “Oh yes,” said Sheri Chang, sweet-faced and smiling again. “All of Stryker’s children!” she said.

  By a pagoda-shaped phone booth, Jill called Tina Tarasov.

  “Yes?” came a tense voice.

  Jill explained why she was calling. “I thought you could shed some light – ”

  “My God, you’ve got a nerve! After what that hospital did to me you want to interview me?”

  The air was hot and sticky. Jill was sweating. “Did to you? Ms. Tarasov, please hear me out. I’m calling independently because I was mystified by your case. It will help others if you help me.”

  Silence stretched for a moment, and then: “Oh, all right. You want to know what that hospital did to me? They got me knocked up, that’s what!”

  Jill’s lips parted, but she found no words.

  “Listen. My husband Alex and I are super, super careful. We’re both twenty-four. It’s too soon to start a family. The only reason I came to the hospital was because I was late and worried. They told me I wasn’t pregnant, but after the exam I was. Something was done to me, goddammit!”

  Jill stared unseeingly at the crowds on Pell Street. “You were late…you mean your period?”

  “Yes.”

  That would shoot down the theory of her ovulation time, unless…

  “Do you sometimes miss periods altogether? Skip a month?”

  A silence. Then, “Yes. When I feel stressed.”

  “That’s very common. It also happens with women who work out a lot.”

  “I work out too. What are you driving at?”

  “The fact that you may have thought you were late when you were actually finally ovulating.”

  “Great! So we’re back to them knocking me up!”

  Maybe they were. “Did your husband know about the miscarriage?”

  Another silence. “I was considering an abortion. Weeks passed and I kept losing my nerve. I never told him, but I was a wreck. He could’ve thought I was screwing around!” Tarasov gave a shrill laugh. “Then I miscarried! Alex was in Houston job hunting at the time. When he got back I told him a hormonal imbalance had caused heavy bleeding. I got lucky, huh?”

  It was incredible – Tarasov was the first patient who had not wanted to get pregnant.

  Jill held her breath. “Do you remember the name of the doctor who examined you?”

  Tarasov gave a snort. “That clinic of yours is like Grand Central. One doc starts on you, gets called away, someone else comes in – who can keep track?”

  “Old or young?”

  “Wait, I do remember. There were two. One because he’s mean. Name began with a G…”

  “Ganon?”

  “Yes! God is he bad. When he examines, it hurts.”

  “And the other?” Jill tried to flatten the tension in her voice.

  Tarasov thought. “Can’t recall the name but – tall and gorgeous.”

  “Levine?” Jill said casually.

  “Yeah! Levine! You know him?”

  Jill thanked Tarasov for her help and hung up.

  A woman’s voice, somber and tense, answered at Maria Moran’s home in Queens. “Hello?”

  Jill felt awful about doing this, but compelled. “This is Dr. Raney from Madison Hospital and I’m terribly sorry to be calling you at this time – ”

  “I’m sorry,” said the voice. “I can’t talk. I have to leave.”

  “Please! It’s about Maria. If you could just answer one question.”

  Silence. Then, “I’m her sister.”

  Jill said, “Were Maria and her husband trying to have a baby? Or was the pregnancy unexpected?”

  A longer silence. Then, “They were trying not to. Kevin said they couldn’t afford it yet.”

  “What was Maria’s reaction to finding that she was pregnant?” />
  Other voices were there with the sister. Jill heard someone calling to her, agitated.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  “What was their reaction? Please!”

  “They were surprised…worried. Then they decided it was” - the voice burst into tears - “the will of God. And they were happy!”

  The line went dead. Jill slowly closed her phone.

  The time was 4:50.

  25

  “I’ll bet it’s the cops again,” said Woody Greenberg.

  Three doctors descended in the elevator, surprised at the summons, trying to guess why the meeting was to take place in the conference room of Howard Graham, the Hospital Director.

  “I hate Graham,” whined Sam MacIntyre. “Haven’t been down to Administration in six months.”

  “Maybe he’s missed you,” said David Levine. Greenberg behind him was childishly counting backward as the car dropped past the floors. Levine held up his watch. It was 5:15. Dammit Jill, where are you? He’d left word for her to come as soon as she got back.

  When they reached the conference room, it was already crowded with OB staff. Howard Graham presided stiffly at the head of the table, flanked by Stryker, Arnett, Rosenberg, Simpson, and Tom Ganon. Around them milled interns, residents and nurses, looking bewildered.

  The three newcomers stood by the door.

  Woody nudged Levine. “What did I tell you?”

  Like everyone David stared at Detective Gregory Pappas, on his feet and pacing behind Graham. His cop’s eyes probed every face. With him stood two uniformed cops.

  Graham cleared his throat and brought the room to order. He introduced Pappas, who without preamble announced that two homicides might be connected to this hospital, this department, and that he was opening a formal investigation.

  David stared. Two homicides?

  “Both pretty unusual,” Pappas went on. “First, for those of you who don’t already know, is the case of Bonnie Gaines, a pregnant teenaged prostitute seen by your clinic yesterday shortly before she was found strangled, her belly drained of amniotic fluid.”

  Mouths dropped open.

  “The syringe used was new,” Pappas continued. “The puncture track was straight and clean. You won’t find that with a junkie’s needle. Also, the site of the puncture was found between the folds of the navel. Very clever, professional.”