The Girl in the Mirror

by Philip J. Gould

  Slowly it dawned on Harriet what George had let slip. “She?” Was it even possible to know the sex at twelve weeks?

  Thomas Mundahl, who’d been unobtrusive with whatever tasks he’d been set also swiftly disappeared, noting the sharp change in mood and the testiness in Harriet’s voice as his cue to vacate the room.

  “I meant ‘it’,” George tried to backtrack, but it was too late. Harriet’s look forewarned him to cease any further attempts at transposing his comment.

  “What else should I know, George? I assume ‘she’ will look normal?”

  “Well, yes, naturally. There’s no advantage to having three legs or two heads. Harriet, you do know what I do for a living,” he replied acerbically. “We have made some slight tweaks to the DNA – improvements, to say the least.”

  “You’ve genetically modified her. You’ve created Frankenstein inside my belly...”

  “Actually, Frankenstein was the scientist, not...,” he went quiet, “...the monster...”

  “Hitler would have loved you.” Tears were freefalling down her face. “Oh George, what have you done? You could go to jail for this.”

  “Don’t worry, my love. It’s all fine. It’s government sanctioned. We are at the forefront of an amazing breakthrough.”

  Harriet was shaking her head in disbelief. “You are breaking the law. What you are doing George is an affront to humanity. It’s insane. You are playing God. Is nothing sacred anymore? You don’t have the right.”

  George stood up from the bed. “People said the same thing about the motor car. Nobody likes change, Harriet.”

  “THAT’S NOT THE SAME GEORGE!” Harriet was shouting. “If you don’t like a car you can send it off to scrap. You can’t do that with a human baby.”

  “Well…” George started but thought better of finishing the sentence. Instead he made strides to the door. “I think I will leave you to calm down,” he said, and walked out from the room before Harriet could throw the vase of flowers on the table beside the bed at him.

  A little over three weeks had passed since the pregnancy had first been dated and the foetus had been viewed − and heard − on the ultrasound. Harriet still couldn’t believe the speed in which her pregnancy had advanced, nor help or contain the resentment she still felt towards her husband, the man she’d trusted and who’d deceived her so impeccably.

  How could he treat her like one of his lab rats?

  Within the operating room was Dr Phelps, a man she’d thought was younger when first they’d met. In fact he was in his fifties; thick grey hair was hidden within a surgical cap and he wore spectacles that suggested he needed a trip to Specsavers. Around him was a team of four medical staff, nurses and midwives, all garbed in blue surgical clothing; caps, face masks; George was sitting at his wife’s side, and Clara, also in the room, stood a little out of the way. The room was kept purposefully cold and George shivered.

  From outside the theatre, Maksim and Thomas were watching through the large observation wall. Thomas was holding a digital video camera which Maksim thought was a bit odd, but then Norwegians were odd − or was he confusing them with the Swedish?

  The operating theatre was fitted with video recording equipment, cameras positioned beneath the ceiling in all four corners of the room. This historic event would forever be remembered, whether it was intentional or not.

  “Okay Harriet, just relax. You won’t feel any pain.”

  “I don’t want this baby,” she lamented. “I mean it George, I’ll never love it.”

  George squeezed her hand reassuringly. “Let’s not think about it right now, hey?”

  “I mean it. She’s not my baby. She’s not, George!”

  “Now, Harriet, I’m sure you know how this all works.” Dr Phelps tried to ignore Harriet’s distress and tried to treat the operation like the happy occasion it ought to have been. “I will make an incision down your abdomen, then through the uterus. Once in there we will pop her out in no time.”

  Harriet turned away from the doctor and faced the side furthest from her husband. “Just get it out of me,” she spat.

  “Right then.” The team of medical staff crowded around Harriet’s bed and the doctor began the caesarean. “Let’s get this party started,” he said with a chuckle. George started to wonder whether this was one of Dr Phelps’ annoying catchphrases. He dismissed the thought.

  The abdomen was prepared with gentle cleaning and disinfectant to reduce the amount of bacteria and chances of infection following delivery. Sterile pieces of cloth were draped over Harriet, leaving just the section of stomach waiting to be performed on. Using a scalpel, Dr Phelps made an incision to the outer layers of skin, just above Harriet’s pubic hairline, approximately six inches in length. Once through, he then cut through some layers of fat tissue, and then through a fibrous layer called the fascia. As the doctor worked, Harriet continued to face away, disinterested, numbed to the experience either by the epidural earlier administered, or her hostility towards the baby, towards the situation from whence she came, or towards the instigator − her husband, for whom she’d carried three normal, healthy children.

  After a few minutes of more careful cutting and gentle probing, Dr Phelps opened the uterus and reached in; slowly and with practiced ease, he removed the baby, careful not to twist her head, neck, body or limbs – a procedure that isn’t as easy as one might think. Reaching for a small medical suction device, Dr Phelps quickly placed the small nozzle in and sucked amniotic fluid from the baby’s mouth. A moment later the small child took her first breath and let out a low, guttural cry that brought a tear to George’s eye.

  “You have a baby daughter,” said a nurse who wrapped the baby in a thick blanket as Dr Phelps detached the umbilical cord. After cleaning her, measuring and weighing her (and the doctor had finished stitching Harriet up), the nurse scooped up the baby and carried her over to her mother. “Here,” the nurse offered the still crying infant to Harriet. “The first moments are the most precious.”

  Harriet glanced at the baby, and turned her head on the pillow, facing away. “Take that….thing away from me,” she said, thick with contempt and utter disgust.

  “Here,” George came forward. “Let me.” The nurse gently placed the small bundle into George’s open arms, taken aback by Harriet’s vehemence. The baby’s cries immediately ceased and a small smile appeared on her lips. George cradled the small child and carried her away from his wife’s bed.

  “I’m going to call you Sophie,” he whispered, “after Sophia, the Goddess of Wisdom, who was there at the beginning, the source of wisdom and the keeper of all that was righteous and just.”

  “Isn’t she adorable,” Clara was beaming, almost as if, George thought, it was her own child… He shook the thought from his head, correcting himself. In some ways, she was. Sophie was as much Thomas, Maksim and Clara’s child, as she was his or Harriet’s. “I want to hold her,” Clara said eagerly. She looked elfin and childlike. It was the happiest she’d been or felt in her entire life.

  Behind them, Harriet huffed. Never had she hated George more than in those mere moments.

  The nurse who had cleaned Sophie and who’d moments earlier handed the baby to George, came over to him, sidestepped Clara and smiled. “She’s so special,” she said.

  George was slow in his response, considering the comment. He turned to the nurse and through a slight smile he said: “You have no idea.” George made to hand Sophie to Clara, ever so careful, handling her like a piece of glass.

  It was at that very instant the still smiling baby did something extraordinary.

  Sophie vanished within George’s arms.

  One moment she was there...

  The next...

  She was gone.

  Chapter One

  Sophie...

  Fear. Certainly
not the most genial of emotions, but the one which carried with it more than just a patina of sweat and a flutter of a heart beat. The child – a girl – was experiencing it for the first time, tasting the bitterness of bile that she’d burped up involuntarily, the aftertaste a combination of unpleasantness and a stinging sensation at the back of her throat.

  The klaxon – a deep, resonant alarm that drilled deep into her head and threatened to deafen her – permeated the walls and the sealed door, locked from the outside, to her room; her sanctuary, her prison – her home. Quite spacious, there was a bed (a cute kitten-print duvet spread across it), a television (turned on, but mute), a wardrobe, some toys (nothing too fancy – a few dolls, a cuddly kangaroo toy she called Flopsy – which she was cuddling for comfort), some books and a computer.

  With clinically white walls, it was almost ethereal, shimmering against the glare of the halogen bulbs that burned from various spots in the ceiling; however, the sanctuary was no holy escape from whatever din or disaster that was developing outside, and by the urgent tone of the alarm, whatever it was was immediate and threatening, and – she thought – was heading her way.

  A thin tendril of smoke was teasing its way into the room through a crack at the bottom of the entranceway, fingers caressing the cream-coloured Saxony carpet that covered the whole living space, normally warm and comforting, now a willing accomplice shedding light on what the exigency was beyond the steel reinforced door.

  Pounding feet could be heard running back and forth, up and down the corridor beyond her room. The girl – no more than five or six in appearance – had her hands pressed against her ears, trying with little or no success to blot out the siren and the gradual addition of coughing and muffled screams from somewhere further than the immediate corridor outside her room.

  Minutes passed with little or no change to her surroundings when the green LED lamp above the door flashed on and the door burst open, slamming against the wall.

  “Sophie, we need to go.” George Jennings, the man who had raised her from the moment she had been born, walked into the room, smoke billowing in from behind him like a Victorian gentleman’s cloak. He was dressed in white trousers, white lab coat (that was black with soot and singed in places) and black Oxford style, supermarket budget priced shoes. His face was dirty and his shoulder-length hair, usually tied in a neat tail, cascaded in a tangle about the sides of his face, bedraggled and unkempt. “Quick! There’s no time!” he hissed.

  With the door open the fire alarm was clangourous and hurt Sophie’s ears. Dragging Flopsy by one of its limp arms, she padded across the room to where her dad stood anxiously.

  “I’m scared,” she said in a little voice as her father took hold of her hand and dragged her out into the corridor now filled with a light, grey cloud that fogged her sight.

  “Try not to breathe… hold your breath.” George scooped his daughter up into his arms with little effort, and ran the length of the corridor with big strides, the security door at the end unlocked (as was normal when the fire alarm sounded). Beyond the security door was a set of three elevators (all out of use – as was also normal when the fire alarm sounded). Through a door to the left of the elevators was a staircase, a green sign above the door stating Emergency Exit, its little green man running through a white door, illustrating the obvious.

  George carried Sophie through it, her arms were wrapped tightly around his neck. Other people were bounding down the stairs, some taking two or more steps at a time; one person barged past George, almost knocking him off balance.

  “Sorry,” a half-gestured apology as the man, ten years younger than George (who was thirty-seven), disappeared round a bend in the stairs.

  Ten flights down the staircase (with eight or nine more to go) the building rocked as an explosion tore through the nineteenth floor, so loud and booming that for a moment Sophie thought she’d never hear anything else again, the sound so intense that her ears were ringing and a thin trickle of liquid seeped from one of them. The sound of glass shattering and metal crumpling was grating against nerves, and the dust of plaster and the shower of brick fragments falling around came laden with the threat of burying them alive. At some point Sophie started to wail uncontrollably and George responded by holding her more tightly, the girl burying her head into his chest, begging for the horror to end. At some point the sound of screaming, haunting and nightmarish, overtook the sound of the devastation that was occurring to the building around them. This terrified her even more than she deemed possible.

  Then the last few steps of the stairs were descended and George burst out of the building and ran out into a crisp, autumnal evening, the sky taking on an Egyptian blue as dusk stole daylight in preparation for night. George continued across the car park, passing the congregation of workers who’d converged at the company’s designated emergency assembly point, and who now watched the building − their place of employment − burn from a third of the way down, thick black smoke billowing into the air in great sheets of toxic gasses and bright tongues of flame licking out, like a komodo dragons’ tongue, searching for more sustenance to devour, urged on by its captive audience.

  George continued towards a stationary blue Peugeot 207 parked in a space designated for the Head of Scientific Research and Advancement.

  Opening the passenger door, placing his daughter on the booster seat and leaning over her so as to buckle her seatbelt, George stood up for a moment and considered the still-crying girl in front of him. Like most fathers, he considered the child as something more than just a little person. She was special. Unlike most fathers, George Jennings’ claim was not just a parent’s unconditional claim; Sophie Jennings was special. She was different to all the other children in the world. She was − as George often stated within board meetings, with his colleagues, with his superiors and even with his wife, Harriet – unique.

  Before closing the door, George ruffled his daughter’s hair playfully – reassuringly (he hoped). “I just need to do something then we’ll be going.”

  “We’re leaving?” Sophie, still sobbing, was incredulous. She’d never left the confines of the now-burning building, let alone driven off to places yonder.

  George didn’t reply, instead he closed the car’s door and jogged a short distance out of the car park onto the main road that serviced the biochemical research centre and other industrialised buildings peppered along the route. Across the road was a bus stop, and more specifically to George, a black waste bin standing sentinel alongside it, cemented into the pavement, its opening like a large, wide letter box. Fortuitously no one was waiting for a bus as George approached the bin. A quick look from side to side and a backwards glance, ensuring no one was watching before he pulled a small, weighty object from beneath the dirty white lab coat he wore and hastily posted it into the bin.

  From inside the car, Sophie had watched, her eyes focusing on the object that her father was disposing of. The shock of seeing the item stifled her whimpering. For a moment her brain could not decipher what her eyes were seeing. Realisation crept in stealthily, blotting out the terrors of just a few moments earlier –

  − she bolted upright, a glaze of sweat coating her face and matting her hair to her head. Her heart was thumping like she’d run full-pelt for half a mile and the familiar taste of bile and vomit, cloying and clinging, sluiced around the insides of her mouth and coated her tongue.

  She closed her eyes a moment and tried to finish the playback of her dream, willing the item that had caused such distress in her dream state to materialise and give an answer to why her recurring nightmare could threaten to cause the onset of a heart attack.

  But the object of her nightmare’s obsession would not come into focus and after a couple of minutes trying to make sense of the mental playback, she pulled herself out from under the covers of her bed, turned on the bedside light and swung her legs out over the edge. She sat t
here for a moment giving the matter some careful thought. Across the small bedroom was a mirror hanging above a desk. She studied her reflection in the dingy light cast by the forty-watt bulb in the lamp. Long blonde hair, sapphire-blue eyes surrounded by deep, dark cavernous sockets, milk-white complexion, full lips courtesy of her father, and a slight, delicate frame – she looked fragile, almost as though a gust of wind could shatter her like a glass bauble on a Christmas tree. Wearing cute bunny-print pyjamas, Sophie shuddered from a sudden chill or from the lingering remnants of her dream memory. Flopsy was close to hand and she picked up the stuffed toy and squeezed its tummy without thinking. She found the plush fabric kangaroo comforting in her grip – it soon helped her recover from the replay of that fateful October day when her world changed beyond recognition.

  The fire and explosions that had rocked Kaplan Ratcliff’s Biochemical and Life Sciences Division. The facility all but destroyed by fire and by the three explosions that rocked the land for one-and-a-quarter miles – eleven staff perishing within the blaze. So intense were the flames that little of their earthly bodies remained, identification rendered impossible on all but one of the unfortunate fatalities.

  All of George’s team, a couple of interns and a security guard – all dead. By sheer luck – George would attest and confide to his wife – he had managed to escape through a dense wall of flame, miraculously evading injury, except perhaps mental anguish.

  Sabotage had been blamed for the incident, and George was very vocal in laying blame on Tom Kaplan himself, the CEO of the company. Though he never looked Harriet in the eyes when he’d voiced his accusations. The reasons for why were not easily explained either, after all, Sophie was ‘unique’ and more than an asset. Why would anyone want to destroy her father’s laboratory and his entire work?