Living Proof

by Kira Peikoff

  An injection of follicle-stimulating hormone into Megan’s rear once a day for ten days would make her ovaries produce about eighteen eggs for the month, instead of the usual one. Then Arianna planned to surgically remove all those eggs, as she did for any patient undergoing in vitro. Except this one had no child in mind.

  Arianna smiled. “It will barely even sting, you big baby. Just think about me doing C-sections all day long.”

  “But a shot every day for ten days?” A sobering thought must have entered Megan’s mind then, because her expression changed. “It’s fine. I can do this.”

  “I know you can, sweetie. You’ll do great. Just imagine how you’re going to spend the five grand.”

  Megan glared at her. “It’s insulting that you’re paying me.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I’d pay more if I could.”

  “And you promise no one’s going to arrest me, right?”

  Arianna flashed her a conspiratorial grin. “What for? You’re just a bighearted egg donor.”

  “What about—?” Megan’s voice lowered. “What about all the other donors? You trust them all right?”

  “Completely. I handpicked every single one of them. No woman who puts her body on the line for science has any interest in destroying it.”

  Megan nodded and then sighed. “Let’s get the damn shot over with already. I can’t stand the anticipation.”

  Arianna smiled, thinking of the childhood nicknames their family had fondly given them: the worrier and the warrior. The irony struck her that their old roles still had not changed. Yet something between them had evaporated over the last few months, something precious, and just when they needed it most: lightness.

  “First things first,” Arianna said as she stood up.

  Megan groaned. “What?”

  “You have to pick out the father,” she deadpanned.

  “What?”

  “We have a wide collection of donated sperm on hand from every race, age, creed, you name it. Widens the gene pool for the research. You can flip through the book and decide who you think your eggs would like best.”

  Megan laughed in spite of herself. “If I didn’t know you that well, Arianna, I’d think you might be having fun with this.”

  Arianna grinned. She was about to respond, determined to regain the tone of their old banter, when she felt herself inadvertently sway. Her office walls rolled into one another with quickening momentum as the pictures of newborns blurred around her, a spinning spread of faces and colors. Shutting her eyes, she sank to her knees in front of her desk and thrust one palm onto the ground. Her forehead dropped to the floor, sweat against cold. She was anchored. With her eyes closed and her body still, the spinning room began to slow down.

  “Oh, Christ.” Megan’s voice hovered somewhere above her head. “Perfect timing. Do you need anything?”

  Arianna didn’t dare shake her head, just as the world was coming to a halt around her. “Time,” she murmured into the floor.

  She felt Megan’s hand stroking her hair. “Okay. Take your time. You know I’m in no rush.”

  Arianna pressed her forehead harder into the ground, as if to prove the stability her senses refused to accept. She heard Megan stand up next to her.

  “I’ll just go out and run an errand. Call me when you’re ready.”

  “’Kay,” Arianna muttered. Around anyone else, she would have been mortified. At least, she thought, Megan knew enough not to make a fuss. Her footsteps fell away, and then the door opened and shut. Arianna breathed in, grateful to suffer alone.

  * * *

  Megan stepped outside onto Washington Square South. In her mind, she replayed the frightening way Arianna had just sunk to the floor like a dummy. What if she were really in trouble?

  But she did what Arianna had long ago instructed: walked away. “Just let me be,” Arianna told her sternly the first time it happened in her presence. “I don’t need any help.”

  Megan marveled at her bravery: How could she handle so much, so well? It just reminded her why she had looked up to her fearless cousin since childhood, when Arianna had ridden her bicycle without hands, approached popular boys she liked, dragged Megan onto her first upside-down roller coaster. Nothing ever seemed to faze her, while even as an adult, Megan panicked over the slightest medical problem. And now—

  “Excuse me,” came a man’s voice behind her.

  Megan turned around, holding her purse close to her body. The man looked a little older than she, in his mid-thirties. He wore faded jeans and a button-down white shirt and held a small notepad. A Yankees baseball cap covered his face in shadow, and when she looked at him, she understood why he wore it. Orange and brown freckles dotted his face with the frequency of pores; they lent him a juvenile quality that made him seem harmless.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “I hope so,” he said with a tentative smile. “I’m actually a reporter on the health beat. My name’s Jed. I noticed you walk out of the fertility clinic right there, and I was wondering if I could ask you about it for a minute.”

  Megan’s brow knotted. “Ask me about what?”

  “Well, for starters, are you a patient at the clinic?”

  “I am.” And how is that your business? she almost snapped, but didn’t.

  “What made you choose to go there, out of all the clinics in the city?”

  She stared at him. “Excuse me?”

  “Sorry to be nosy,” he said, but his tone was urgent.

  “Are you doing a survey or something?” she asked. I’m a patient, she thought. I’m supposed to want a baby.

  “A survey? Kind of. You could say that. I’m trying to figure something out.”

  “Well,” she said, “I decided to go there because I got a great recommendation about the doctor. What are you trying to figure out exactly?”

  “I’ll tell you,” he said, stepping closer. “See, I got this tip that a bunch more women than usual are going to this one clinic all of a sudden. It’s such a small clinic, too. Maybe my mind’s overactive, but I thought it sounded like there might be a story there. See if the patients know something I don’t.”

  “I see. Where’d you hear that?”

  He shrugged with polished nonchalance. “A tip from a source. So, have you noticed anything? Off the record.”

  Megan shook her head and tried to look puzzled. “I don’t know anything about that. But I will tell you that the doctors there are really top-notch, even though the clinic’s small. I’ve already recommended them to a lot of friends, and I’m sure others are doing the same. What kind of story are you doing?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  “Who do you write for?”

  “I’m a freelancer. Got to depend on my own instincts to find stories. What do you do?”

  “I’m in real estate. And I’m sure there’s lots more interesting things happening in New York City,” she said, and then added, “Good luck,” for fear of seeming rude.

  She started to fish her sunglasses out of her purse. When she found them, he was still standing there.

  “You couldn’t even point me in the right direction, at least?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

  “Sorry, I don’t have a clue what you mean,” she replied, and crossed the street toward Washington Square Park. Don’t run, she thought. Don’t look back, and don’t touch your phone yet. She ambled through the park, forcing herself to concentrate on the sunset-orange trees, the park’s glorious fountain, and a nearby acrobat who had drawn an impressive crowd. She eased among the chanting people, pretending to watch the man doing backflips over a row of tin cans. When she had inched into the first layer of people, she knew the reporter could no longer see her, so she withdrew her cell phone from her purse and called Arianna.

  It rang twice before she picked up. “Hey, I’m okay now—”

  “Arianna, I think somebody might know something.”

  TWO

  Trent R
owe looked at his watch and sighed—12:35 P.M. Four hours and twenty-five minutes until the weekend. For the second time that day, he thought how oppressive it was that his office did not have a window. If only he could see the sky, or the sleek façade of another building, even a sliver of daylight. The headquarters were in the heart of Midtown: mid-Midtown, he thought wryly. Midway up the building, midway through the day, midlife crisis well under way. He was only thirty-six, though he felt much older. Not a sense of maturity, it was more a lack-of-freedom-until-he-could-retire kind of old.

  He glanced up at the only picture on the wall where he would have liked his window. Framed in imitation gold, it was the famous portrayal of the Crucifixion. Blood dripped from Jesus’ nailed palms, and his head hung forward limply, crowned with a ring of thorns. It was a gift from Trent’s supervisor, Gideon Dopp, when he had started the job three years ago. Dopp, a former priest, explained that Jesus’ suffering was a daily reminder of why their work mattered: the modern-day version of catching heretic killers like those who murdered Christ. That the crimes now lacked visible gore made them no less violent. Trent’s job offered the chance to stamp out these sins, serve justice, and uphold morality.

  Trent Rowe was an agent at the New York City bureau of the Department of Embryo Preservation.

  “Trent,” spoke a voice in his doorway.

  He closed the game of solitaire on his screen, which luckily faced away from the door, and looked up. Dopp’s square shoulders reached both sides of the doorway. His eyes were intense, and he had the perfectly straight nose of a nobleman. One side of his mouth dipped down when he smiled, yet it seemed entirely genuine. That was one of the reasons Trent admired him: He was no phony, and on some level, Trent knew that he himself was.

  “Hi, boss,” he said.

  Dopp clasped the doorframe. “We’re starting in ten minutes. Are you ready?”

  “All set.” Trent’s lips spread into an ashamed smile; he had forgotten about his presentation. “I think you’re going to find it very interesting,” he added hastily.

  “Good. Banks and Jed are both back.”

  When Dopp left, Trent returned to moving red on black, black on red, letting his eyes blur over the colors.

  All week, he had been researching one fertility clinic. It was an arduous task, but Trent knew Dopp would be happy with his research. Trent had first noticed this certain clinic’s unusual spike in popularity while going over routine reports, and now Dopp would be even more pleased with the surprising results of his digging. Maybe it would help propel him out of this office and into one with a window.

  The thought of a promotion filled him with superficial warmth, like drinking froth instead of coffee. A promotion would confirm that he was right for this job, a validation he desperately wanted, and it would show the world what a success he was, so maybe the fact that he didn’t feel like one wouldn’t matter. He looked at the painting of the Crucifixion, convincing himself that he had every reason to feel successful: His work was more worthy here than it had been at the newspaper. Here he was able to defend the tenets of Christianity, help the helpless, expose the corrupt, preserve human life.

  But sometimes he wondered what his life would be like if he had stayed at Newsday, Long Island’s biggest paper, where he had worked the investigative beat. There were thrilling moments, to be sure, such as when he had single-handedly uncovered a money-laundering scheme at one of the biggest churches on the Island. It had taken guts to ingratiate himself with the priests, to draw out answers to the right questions under a guise of harmlessness. Oh, how he basked in the respect of his editors when his front-page series on the fraud had even earned him a spot as a Pulitzer finalist, his proudest moment to date. But despite his success, that story had crushed his religious consciousness. Later, there would be more such stories—the worst being gay priests who preyed on little boys—that made him privately question God’s very existence. It was too dangerous a precipice, and Trent had pulled back swiftly before looking down too far. His editors were devastated when he told them he was leaving to join the DEP. But here he could restore his damaged connection to God, with no doubts about false leads or wasted time. Here he had finally found meaning; so how could his dominant feeling be boredom?

  With a sigh, he walked down the hall to the meeting room, with its oval table and downtown view. Jed, Banks, and Dopp were already there.

  “We were just talking progress,” Dopp said, “or lack thereof.”

  Jed nodded, his lips tight. His orange hair looked flattened. Trent had never seen him wear anything but a suit and tie, but now he had on jeans, which Trent eyed enviously.

  Jed reluctantly explained that none of the patients would talk to him, and Banks reported that the clinic had passed the inspection.

  On the table, Banks dropped a form with a slanted signature—Arianna Drake. “There weren’t any embryos missing or damaged, but the numbers are quite high.” He paused, wagging his hand in the air as if to summon the right words. “There’s something about that woman, the doctor. I can’t explain it, but I don’t like it.”

  “What do you mean?” Dopp said.

  Banks’s lips curled up. “Some people give off bad vibes, and she’s one of them.”

  Trent smiled to himself. He could not have hoped for a better lead-in.

  Dopp’s thick brows knotted. “That’s something to consider. But we need facts.” He turned to Trent. “What do the numbers tell us?”

  “Let me show you what I found.” Trent rose, shutting off the lights, and slipped the disc into the projector. “This slide shows six bar graphs representing the number of infertility patients at each of these six clinics over the past year. The clinics are all similar in size and location.” He clicked through the next six slides slowly, each of which showed a large graph mapping a single clinic’s data. “These six clinics all show a steady, relatively fixed influx of IVF patients each month. Some months are more popular in all the clinics, but none show especially volatile shifts. With minor variations, they all tend to get busier in the summer and slower in the winter. But now, look at this graph.”

  With a flourish, he clicked to the next slide. Across August, September, and October, the bars on the graph rocketed off the chart.

  “This is a graph of the Washington Square Center. For the first nine months, the graph is like the others. But over the past several months, this clinic has been treating double the number of patients, leading to over four hundred EUEs each month. It’s inexplicable. The clinic has not hired a new doctor, increased their advertising, offered any new services, or lowered their rates. There is no reason for this spike that we know of.” Trent paused, relishing the perplexed faces. Oh, how he was going to blow them away.

  “There’s something here,” Dopp said, frowning. Trent noticed that when his boss was upset, his features drooped, as if his face had emerged from the side of a melting candle.

  Trent looked away. “There are a few more facts that you might find interesting.”

  “Go on.”

  “I did some research on the doctor who owns the clinic, Arianna Drake. Her father, who’s now deceased, was one Edmond Drake.”

  Trent clicked the slide so a newspaper article filled the screen.

  “When I started researching her, I didn’t find anything much right away, but one thing led to another, and I finally stumbled across this op-ed by her father in a small Brooklyn newspaper that folded over a decade ago. Here is the first paragraph. I won’t make you read any more of it.”

  HOW THE DEP IS DRAGGING AMERICA BACK TO THE MIDDLE AGES

  By Edmond Drake

  In outlawing the destruction of human embryos, the newly formed DEP is, in essence, freezing science itself, tucking it away in the same liquid nitrogen that freezes each embryo. How long it will remain confined there depends on the courage of future thinkers left untainted by today’s religiosity. It will be up to those minds—in a decade, a century, perhaps longer—to break the ideological stranglehold on
this country and use those embryos to carry on the scientific revolution that we are now ending.

  The men stared.

  “That’s right,” Trent said. “Edmond Drake was a dissenter. He wrote this article while his daughter was in college at Columbia. No doubt, she picked up on his radicalism, because she became a cheerleader for a biochemist at the school who was later found to be spearheading illegal research. She organized protests each time a DEP investigator visited the campus.”

  “How do you know this?” Dopp demanded.

  “Digging deep into the campus library’s archives. Columbia ended up firing the scientist, a Dr. Samuel Lisio, and her group held a sit-in for two days.”

  “Disgusting,” Banks muttered. “It’s unbelievable how young people can be brainwashed like that.”

  “I tried to track down Lisio himself,” Trent said, “but he disappeared after he got out of jail.”

  Dopp’s pen stopped moving across his notepad. “What else does she do now, besides work? Any clubs, groups, associations?”

  “I don’t know. She hasn’t been in the news or published anything except in medical journals. She could still be a rebel, but we can’t be sure.”

  “Exactly,” Dopp said. “We need to dig deeper. Her embryo count is always perfect, every inspection, and she passed the audit six weeks ago. We can’t find fault with her clinic, and we can’t swing enough fact-based suspicion to get a warrant for a wiretap. But I can feel something is off. How often do people like her find their way back?”

  “What are you saying?” Banks asked with interest.

  “I’m saying, this could be exactly what we need.” Dopp leaned in, his eyes lit with eager suspicion.

  The three men nodded. Trent was sure they were all thinking the same thing: a shutdown—a legal permanent closing of a fertility clinic for ethical transgressions. For every shutdown, the state allotted more money to the department. There hadn’t been a shutdown in two years, and though no one had stated it, it was becoming more of a priority than ever: the department was struggling to defend its very existence. The liberals in the state assembly were gaining strength for the first time in a decade, and they were shouting that the DEP was a waste of taxpayer money. The department’s fate would be decided during the budget negotiations in January, when its conservative advocates would have to fight to show why it was still relevant.