Life First: (Dystopian series, book 1)

by RJ Crayton

  I wasn’t sure why she’d asked me here, so I sat silently and waited for her to start. Finally, she did, looking at me with an intensity that had the power to suck you in or force you to turn away. I was sucked in.

  “I’m so glad we’ve finally met, Kelsey. You’ve made my brother so happy, and for that, I’m really grateful.”

  I blushed at the unexpected compliment. “You have a wonderful brother, and he makes me very happy. I feel lucky he’s in my life.”

  She nodded. “Well, you two are clearly a good fit. Luke has always had a side to him that wasn’t....” She trailed off searching for the right word, finally coming up with, “settled. I always worried he would never be settled. It was tough on him growing up with a mother who wasn’t well. The rest of us were older and understood more, but for him, it was hard, and I don’t think he ever felt a natural sense of peace. The sense of what normal could be that Chase and I had. But, since he’s met you, he’s gotten that.”

  Her confiding this in me could have felt awkward, yet it didn’t. It felt special that she could tell me this. The content of her statement was odd in that it was surprising to me in many ways, yet not at all. In the time that we were dating, Luke always seemed confident and strong and at peace. Like an anchor. Yet, I knew the Luke I’d met the year before was different. I hadn’t known what had changed. I’d always thought it was whatever happened to Emmie that led Luke to work for Dr. Grant. But, Luke had never told me what that was. He just said that Dr. Grant had helped Emmie, and it wasn’t really his place to tell me what had happened to her.

  It didn’t bother me that he didn’t tell me. I admired that he kept his sister’s confidence. And I understood, too, that many of the things Dr. Grant did were illegal, and telling me would expose that. Not that I didn’t know some of the things, but perhaps what he had done for Emmie was something I wouldn’t want to know.

  Emmy’s stare was burrowing into me as I pondered what she said. “I appreciate that you think so much of my influence. But I think Dr. Grant, and you and me and his life this past couple of years have ultimately helped Luke gain that peace.”

  She nodded. “You’re right. I was probably the first piece. What happened with me, that led me to Dr. Grant. Did Luke ever tell you what happened?”

  I shook my head, no. Anything more would have felt like I was asking her to tell me. While I wanted to know, it wasn’t my place to ask. It was clearly something personal that she would tell when she was ready — or perhaps never. So, I looked out the window of the small room.

  Emmie spoke in a low voice, and I turned back to her. She looked resolute, yet a bit frail. “I didn’t think he had,” she said. “That’s why I brought you here. I thought you should know.”

  I gave her a look I hoped was reassuring, that let her know she could confide in me. “A couple of years ago, Greg wanted a baby. I did, too, on some level. But, I was ambivalent. I’d helped raise Chase and Luke and knew children required a lot of effort. Part of me was ready. Part of me wasn’t. But, since Greg wanted it so much, I went into it with the attitude that we’d try. No huge plan of what to do. My friend Jenny had even suggested taking prenatal vitamins while trying would give the best results. But, I just wanted to see what would happen. Not do any artificial encouragement. After two months of seeing what happened, we realized I was pregnant, and I was extremely happy. I went to the doctor, got a prenatal supplement, started preparing myself mentally.”

  She had a certain sadness in her eyes when she spoke, and I knew it had not ended well as Luke was not an uncle. She looked around the room, staring momentarily at a shelf with nothing on it, perhaps remembering something that had been there and was now gone. Or remembering what she had planned to put there. After a moment, she took a deep breath and returned her focus to me. “We were going to put the baby in here. It was pretty early on when Greg bought that rocking chair. He thought I could sit in it while the baby was still in the womb, and the baby would be used to the familiar swaying by the time he or she came out.

  “When I was 16 weeks, I went in for an ultrasound. We thought maybe we could see the gender of the baby. We expected the ultrasound tech to tell us all about the baby: fingers, toes, nose, everything we were seeing on the screen. Instead, our technician was completely silent during the procedure. He seemed not to share in our marvel at the baby. When the doctor came in, he told us the baby appeared to have a neural tube defect.”

  I took a small breath in, tried not to gasp. Luke had told me of one of Dr. Grant’s patients with a neural tube defect. It was a horrible complication of pregnancy that could produce a baby with no brain, or such a severely damaged one he would be in a persistent vegetative state for most of his life, and likely die by the age of 10.

  “The baby had only a portion of his brain and my doctor thought it unlikely to survive beyond a month or two. The time he would be alive would be hooked to monitors and in incubators and untouchable. He wouldn’t know what was going on. He’d be just there, a body, a life form, but without soul, without life.

  “It was then that I had a mini meltdown — right there in the doctor’s office. I began screaming, throwing things, and hyperventilating. Finally, I passed out. They took me in for an evaluation. I spent three nights in a psychiatric ward,” she said looking directly at me, and I could see the fear, the loneliness, the terror that experience had caused her. “I was afraid I would become like my mother. She was always different, but what pushed her over the edge was the stillborn. When Luke was one, they had a girl named Sophia. But she was dead when she was born. And after that, my mother went downhill.

  “So, I was afraid it would happen to me, but I couldn’t tell anyone. Not the doctors at the psych ward or they’d keep me there, keep me locked away. Greg knew. I couldn’t talk about it with him, though. Speaking it made me worry he’d take me back to the institution. So, we didn’t speak about it. I worried and Greg worried without talking. Luke was beside himself, worrying that I would become like Mom. It was a bad time for him, but strangely it was Luke who rescued me.”

  She smiled and I leaned in slightly, curious what Luke did. “He was drowning his sorrows with liquor, when he met you at a bar. He told me he’d been 100 percent obnoxious to a complete angel, though he didn’t remember exactly what he said. He thought maybe you were a regular, and went back the next night, hoping he could apologize. He didn’t see you. But, on the TV screen behind the bar, there was an interview on, an interview with an obstetrician who specialized in tough cases — Dr. Stephen Grant.”

  My mouth opened in shock, but it quickly closed. I hadn’t known Luke had found Dr. Grant for his sister, or that he’d found him when looking for me. It was odd to hear, yet right in a sense. It seemed to me that Luke and Dr. Grant and I were all connected in some unseen way, some way I couldn’t quite put my finger on, and this just confirmed that. Emmie looked briefly at me, then continued her story.

  “He told me about him, told me that maybe my doctor was wrong and I should see this guy.” She paused a moment, then let out a cynical laugh. “Luke was right. My doctor was wrong. Dr. Grant said it was much worse than my doctor had described. My baby would probably die in utero, around eight months, and that I’d probably have to birth the corpse. While they could remove the baby through surgery, birthing the corpse is the preferred method because it carries lower risk for the mother.

  “Of course, that was not what Greg or I wanted to hear. Greg was beside himself. He looked at Dr. Grant and said that was crazy, that I couldn’t take that. Wasn’t there any other way? That’s when Dr. Grant confided there might be another way, one that wasn’t quite legal, but that we could pursue if we were interested. Before I even had a chance to process it all, I said, ‘yes.’ I knew in my heart that was right for me, for this baby who couldn’t survive.

  “Greg and I went home and talked about it. We both agreed we wanted to just end the pregnancy if that were possible. I’ve known Greg my entire life, you know. He lived three houses down
. He knew my mother went insane after the stillborn. He saw firsthand how hard it was on me. And he knew I couldn’t live through birthing a corpse.

  “It was such a strange situation to be in. Knowing the life you helped create wouldn’t really get a chance at life. No matter what you did. I just wanted it to be over, to be over and done with, so I could move on. We had another appointment with Dr. Grant, and he gave me pills. They weren’t anything harmful to me, but they would decrease oxygen supply to the baby, and then he’d be gone. Once that happened, since I was fewer than 20 weeks, Dr. Grant could remove him surgically. They call it a D&C. And so, that’s what I did. I took the pills. I went to Dr. Grant a week later, he did a sonogram and determined the baby had died. As such, he did the D&C, and sent me home. And I was sad, but grateful. Grateful that it was over, and Greg and I could move on. Grateful that Dr. Grant gave me a choice to give me some peace, and the baby some peace.”

  She paused, her hands in her laps, quiet, contemplative. “We named him Philip,” she said. “You have to name them, even if they don’t survive, you know. I hadn’t ever really realized that, until it happened. That you had to name the baby, if it’s beyond 14 weeks, no matter what the cause of expiration, even a late spontaneous abortion, they require a name and a death certificate. Even though the baby never lived to take breath outside the womb, it’s considered alive, and its passing is considered a death.”

  Her eyes were moist, and there was a torrent of emotions sitting just beneath the surface of her voice, but she had spoken her entire story steadily and clearly, and seemed to be holding together for the moment. I felt honored that she had confided in me. Telling that to the wrong person would land all of them in a holding facility: Emmie, Greg, Dr. Grant.

  I left my rocking chair and crossed over to Emmie, keeping my head low to avoid banging it on the ceiling. I knelt in front of her. “I’m so sorry about what happened, Emmie,” I told her, as I patted her knee. “I’m glad you confided in me.”

  She smiled as a single tear ran down her cheek. She used a hand to wipe it, then took both her hands to grab one of mine. “Of course I can confide in you. You’re the reason Dr. Grant does this. The reason he helps women like me.”

  I joined her on the chest, and shook my head. “He does it for my mother, not me.”

  She shook her head in protest. “Yes, your mother started it. She was the spark. But, it’s you he does it for. He told me that once.”

  I stiffened at her words, cocking my head slightly towards her, to make sure I’d heard her correctly. Why would he be doing it for me? We’d never even met until the year before, and at that point, he’d been doing this already. I bit my lip, and crinkled my brow as I tried to figure out why she’d think that. Clearly realizing she’d brought about this state, Emmie spoke.

  “He went to your mother’s funeral,” she said. I stared, wide-eyed. I hadn’t realized. Those days were a blur in my mind, all running together, the sadness, the emptiness. Only random, disconnected moments remained clear — my father standing over her casket, the way her hair had turned a slightly darker shade of auburn after she died, so it didn’t look right as it brushed against the favorite red dress she’d been buried in, the apple crisps Haleema would cook each night and let me eat for breakfast every day for the week following the funeral, how I didn’t go to school at all during that time, but Susan would come over and we’d do the homework assignments together, Susan leading me through the stuff I didn’t understand.

  After the montage of my past finished playing in my head, I noticed Emmie was staring, waiting. I nodded for her to go on. “He’d never told me your name or your mother’s name, but said he started doing this after a patient died because she wasn’t given a choice about how to handle her life. He said he went to the funeral and he saw this woman’s daughter, and she was so sad. She looked as if her life had been ripped apart. She looked like she was burying her own soul when they lowered the casket. The little girl seemed hollow. And that, he said, is when he vowed he would never let any of his patients die because they didn’t have a choice. He would do everything in his power to make sure they were given choices, even if it didn’t take into account everyone’s life at stake. To him, he would put one life first: that of his patient. No one else.”

  * * *

  When Albert arrives, he tells me there are papers for me to review, and notes that page five is worth studying. Then, he leaves to get some coffee. “I think better with a little caffeine in me,” he says on his way out. I open the folder he’s left and turn to page five.

  There it sits, Emmie’s letter. I shake my head and chuckle. I had expected more because Luke said it was a letter. But, what I have is so Emmie. It is four lines in neat script, signed at the bottom with an elegant E.

  The doctor was wrong. That little girl didn’t

  bury her soul that day. She still has it, and she’s

  using it to fight for what she believes in. Keep

  fighting, Kelsey. You’re doing the right thing.

  — E

  I smile. She knows just what to say. I hope she is right.

  Chapter 29: A Fool for a Client

  Uncle Albert and I agree I should not testify. Putting me on the stand is too risky. First, I might come off unsympathetic. But more importantly, I can’t risk questions about my baby’s father.

  However, in the absence of my own testimony, we need someone to fill in the blanks: a character witness. Susan did a great job in both testifying about me and her own condition. But, Albert also wants someone to testify about me as a person. Someone who knows me well and will come off in a good light. He’s rejected the Spencers, as they were hesitant when he talked to them, and the fact that my saving their son had possibly endangered the life of someone else.

  In these last few minutes before we go into court, before my father arrives, Albert gives me one last reminder about today’s testimony.

  “I know we talked about this earlier. I just want to say again, it was a tough choice between your father and Haleema,” he says, trying to reassure me. “Haleema would be a better witness, in terms of drawing sympathy for you on the jury. She’s great. She comes across matronly and loving and could accurately describe your warmth, your personality, acts of kindness and generosity.”

  He trails off a second, and brings on the buts. “But, I don’t have time to prepare her. I just worry that if she says something wrong, something I don’t anticipate, it could really hurt us.”

  He looks as if he thinks I’ll argue it, but I say nothing. “So, your father, I think is the best we can do. Men generally don’t play as well with juries, but I’ve seen your dad’s internal polls. He has a really high likeability quotient among men and women. You can’t underplay that. I think it will make up for anything we might have lost with Haleema. It will also give us your father’s skill, both as a politician and a legal mind. He’ll have a better instinct of what to say and what not to say, and where the pitfalls are.”

  I nod. This sounds the same as before. The fact that Albert feels the need to discuss it again worries me. “I’m sure my father will do fine,” I say, trying to sound reassuring — for both my own and Albert’s sake.

  Uncle Albert points at my belly. He never says Luke’s name. “They won’t expect your father to have an answer to that question. He can say as much.” At this point, Albert pauses. “Just one more time, I want you to think on this, because this is important, for both in the courtroom and in here,” he says significantly, looking around at the four white walls. “There is no indication of any relationships out in the general sphere that Bickers would have heard of.”

  I shake my head no. I’ve been over it in my mind dozens of times. Luke and I flew under the radar. Because of the nature of the work they did, both Luke and Dr. Grant were low profile together. Also, with my father’s political issues, I kept my private life as private as possible. We had not meant to have a secret courtship, but looking back on it, we had, and it is working to our a
dvantage now. A quick survey from the prosecutor of those who knew me would not turn up my relationship with Luke.

  There may be evidence that I have been to Dr. Grant’s lab on a few occasions, but given his testimony against me, that would hardly seem a problem. However, it is important no one make the connection between Luke and me. It would be nightmarish if Luke got tossed as my guard, especially now that I know what guards do to inmates at night.

  Uncle Albert gives me a final onceover, looks at his watch and says, “Alright, let’s head over.”

  * * *

  My father’s direct testimony goes well. He manages to paint a nice picture of me as the all-American girl who was a good student, a good teacher, had friends, and dated occasionally. More importantly, he says I am a good daughter, and that we have a close relationship, especially since I am motherless. He plays up the devastating effect my mother’s death had on me, and how I overcame that to try to lead a normal life. He says after I was marked, I seemed to be in a haze similar to the one I fell into after Mom died. He tells the jury he assumed it would pass after the transplant, then he puts on his public look of regret for not having seen the depth of my anguish.

  I must admit, my father is good at this. When Albert finishes, Bickers begins his cross.

  “Senator Reed,” Bickers begins, respectfully. “I have just a couple of questions for you.”

  My father motions him to continue.

  Bickers moves closer, smiles, pauses. “You mentioned that your daughter dated occasionally?”