The Clone's Mother

by Cheri Gillard

  I shuffled along and my thoughts went to Anna and her lost baby. I cried even harder, openly sobbing as I stumbled forward. Maybe this was a baby to replace her baby. Would this happen to me just so she could have a baby back? Once she woke up, she’d need to know there was something to hope for. Now that Charlotte was gone.

  Charlotte. My mind whirled around about her adoption. How it was for Nikki to give up her own baby. A baby she didn’t even know wasn’t her own. Would I be able to have a baby and then give it away? But how could I have a baby? I couldn’t really be pregnant. It was impossible. Unless I was completely insane and had done something crazy and then forgotten. Had I gone on a drinking binge? Had I been drugged? Where had I been that someone could have done that to me?

  My eyes popped open. I stopped in my tracks. I remembered. I all-at-once knew how this had happened. Carl. When I was in his office, he’d put the baby in me. While I thought he was taking out tissue for biopsy, he was putting in embryos. I was pregnant with Carl’s baby. That had to be it.

  He’d violated me. This was almost as bad as a rape. Except with this, I couldn’t even realize the gravity of it. No violence. No awareness.

  But he’d done it to me just the same.

  The emotions roiling around in me gave me physical pain. I didn’t even understand what I was feeling. Sure, there was outrage, horror, disbelief. But the defilement without the brutality? I didn’t know what to do with that.

  But I did know one thing.

  I took off again, this time with purpose. I headed straight for the hospital and Carl’s office. I had to see his book, that locked-up record of women he’d transferred embryos into. I had to see if my name was in that book.

  Chapter 37

  When the elevator opened, I peeked around the door and could see Nazi sitting at her desk. The door closed without me getting off and I pushed the button to the ICU floor. A visit to Anna would give me time to let Nazi pack it up and go home for the night.

  Just outside the elevator where I got off, Lucy was pushing her cart down the hall toward the cardiac unit.

  “Lucy,” I hollered.

  “Hey, lady.” She stopped and waited for me to catch up.

  “I need a favor,” I whispered. I didn’t care about the phone threat. I wasn’t going to let Carl get away with this.

  “Maybe I got a favor to give you.” She looked at me with worried eyes. “You okay?”

  “I need to do a little more research. Like before.”

  “Research can be good.”

  “Are you going to be doing any executive cleaning soon?”

  “I think I just might. Maybe in an hour, if that’s good.”

  “Great. I’ll see you then.”

  She turned her head sideways, looking me up and down. “You sure you okay?”

  I didn’t answer. Just tried to smile and ducked away before the tears started again.

  The next sixty minutes flew by at Anna’s bedside. Joe and his parents had gone home for a while, so I sat in solitude as the machines hummed along and Anna slept. She’d had a good day. Now that she was no longer paralyzed with Pavulon, she could open her eyes. She had tracked Joe moving around her bed earlier in the day. The vent was giving minimal support and the doctor was talking extubation in the next day or so. It would be good to see her with the tube out of her airway. Joe would be encouraged by the change.

  An MRI had shown good progress as well. The swelling in her brain was down and she’d had no more bleeding. The drain was gone, the bandage was off, except for an inch square gauze over the incision. And by draping down the hair above the surgical site, the dressing could almost be covered.

  I focused my mind on her. I didn’t want to think about me. Too traumatic. I certainly wasn’t ready to comprehend the magnitude of what had been done to me. Goose bumps rippled my skin every time my mind tried to figure it out. Couldn’t keep doing that. I’d go nuts.

  When the hour was spent, I kissed Anna on the forehead, squeezed her hand and said, “I love you, Anna Banana. Get well. We need you.”

  She blinked and might have even smiled. Or at least tried. It sent shivers through me to see it.

  On the elevator going back upstairs, my stomach began to twist and turn and flutter, like the monkeys in my stomach had gone to war.

  The doors opened to a dark hallway, except for the security lights that lit the passageway in soft radiance. Nazi was gone. The place had a sedate ambience.

  Lucy was at the end of the hall, dusting the blinds behind Nazi’s desk. Without even looking my way, she said, “Good night for research, I heard.”

  No answer was needed. The door to Carl’s office was already propped open. After I went in, I shut the door and went to Carl’s desk.

  I’d brought a screwdriver this time. I borrowed it from the nurses’ station on ICU. Most every floor had a few tools rattling around in their drawers. They wouldn’t miss it for a while.

  I lay on my back under the desk, reaching up to loosen the screws. They came undone easier since they’d already been monkeyed with by me once before. Which was a lucky thing, because the tip of the screwdriver kept slipping out of the screw heads.

  Maybe my shaking hands had something to do with that.

  Once enough screws were out, I yanked on the drawer and shook it around until it came off the runner on one side and tilted down.

  I stuck my hand in and felt around. The book wasn’t right on top anymore. Some loose papers were there, and some heavy object held them all in place. It was cold and smooth. And heavy. And it was hard to move because of the angle of my arm squeezed so tightly between the underside of the desk and the top of the drawer. I had to work by flicking my fingertips to scoot it off the stack of papers so I could go probing for the notebook. Once it clunked down along the side and out of reach, I had the sudden thought I’d been touching a gun. But now I couldn’t reach it, couldn’t confirm what it was. I had to let it go.

  When I dug below the surface junk, I found the book. I extricated it from the drawer, easing it out over my head. My hands shook so much, both from muscle strain and nerves, I dropped it on my face. If it hurt, I didn’t notice. I was too distracted by the fact I was about to learn the truth about my condition.

  The picture of Charlotte fell out. I tucked it back next to the one of Zoe in the page where Nikki’s name was scribbled into the Zoe column like an afterthought.

  The time came to turn the page. My sweaty hands trembled so badly, I couldn’t get a hold of the corner to turn it. I scooted from beneath the desk, no longer concerned about remaining hidden. I leaned against the wall and set the book in my lap.

  Holding my breath, I finally managed to separate the pages from each other and turn to the next page. More columns filled the next two pages. I scanned the names. Half way down the second page, there it was.

  Kathleen Johnston. My name was under the Jack column. The date was the same I’d gone in for the ultrasound to check my cyst. The lunatic had indeed put a cloned embryo of his son into me.

  Son. I was pregnant with a boy. Now I knew. It was official. I was going to have a baby boy.

  I don’t know how long I sat there staring at nothing, but it must have been a while. Lucy came to the door and said, “Surely that’s enough research for one night, lady.”

  I couldn’t see her from where I sat on the floor behind the desk, but I could hear in her voice that she was nervous.

  I shoved the book inside the drawer, did a crummy job of putting the runner back on, and shut off the desk lamp. Outside the room, Lucy asked, “How’d the research go?”

  My voice wavered. “Done. Got what I needed. Yup.” Boy, had I gotten it. “Thanks, Luce.”

  “Got somethin’ for you.” She pressed a key into my sweaty palm. “Now, if you need to do any more research, you be on your own. I like you, but I like my job too. So you tuck that in somewheres safe, and you say nothin’ about that to nobody, and we all stay fine.”

  I looked at the key in
my hand which had Do Not Duplicate stamped deeply into the metal. “Won’t you need this?” I asked through a fog.

  “You think I give you mine? No way, lady. Don’t even ask where that one come from, and we all stay happy.”

  “Thanks,” I think I said. I pocketed the key and left Lucy behind me.

  I staggered away down the hall and must have gotten on the elevator, because I eventually found myself on ground level outside the hospital walking down a sidewalk. Rain was dumping, but I didn’t care. It was nothing compared to the trouble inside of me.

  Mack’s condo loomed before me in no time, or maybe it was after hours. I had no idea. I tripped up the stairs and found his door in spite of the tears blurring my vision.

  The noise of my feet faltering up the steps must have alerted Mack to my presence, because as I stood staring at his door snuffling, dripping, and whimpering, the door opened and a very surprised man stood before me.

  “Kate? What’s wrong? Has something happened? Come in here,” and he pulled me into his embrace, then he walked me into his kitchen to get a towel and a glass of water.

  And we thought I was crying before.

  The floodgates let loose and my heart burst and all the pain, fear, anger, and confusion came rushing out in a torrent of tears, earth-shaking sobs, and utter collapse. Mack couldn’t even hold me up, so heavy was this burden crushing me to the ground.

  I curled into a soggy, wet ball on his kitchen floor while he hovered over me and tried to hold me close to him.

  When the deluge finally abated into a manageable sluice, I lifted my head and tried to focus on Mack’s face. His expression suggested I didn’t look so good.

  He took my face in his hand. With his thumbs, he wiped away some of the tears soaking my cheeks.

  “What happened, Bright Eyes? Did someone hurt you?” The pain in his voice bolstered me, let me know he cared deeply and would just sit with me a while.

  He tried to see into my thoughts, impaling me with a look so intense, I had trouble letting him see me that honestly.

  “It’s hard to explain,” I stuttered out between crying hiccups.

  He kept penetrating my eyes with his, trying to understand, giving me the time necessary to speak.

  A deep breath shuddered through me, slowing my sobs. I scooted around to face him straight on.

  “Want some water?” he asked. “It’s going to take a while to replace all those lost fluids.” He smiled, like he hoped he could lighten my heart a smidgen.

  “Sure.” It couldn’t hurt. And it’d give me a second to figure out what I was going to say. Well, Mack, it’s like this. I’m pregnant with your sister’s baby. This was not how I thought it would be best to lay this one on him.

  After draining the glass and giving it back, Mack asked if I’d rather sit in the chairs.

  “No, thanks. It’s too far from the ground. I just need to be close to the ground right now.”

  He nodded, as if that made perfect sense.

  “This isn’t going to be easy,” I said through one of the sobbing hiccup spasm things.

  “Figured that much,” he said with another small smile.

  With a deep breath, I opened my mouth to speak. But I didn’t. The air came back out without any words. So I tried again. My chest heaved up and down with every labored breath. I couldn’t control it. Three or four more attempts and still nothing. Then another breath sucked in down to my toes, and this time, when it began to seep out, my voice came out with it, unfolding the tale of my woes.

  “Did I ever mention to you that before I met you, or—” I couldn’t say Carl’s name. “—I was at that doctor’s office for an ovarian cyst?”

  Mack shook his head.

  “Well, I didn’t have a cyst. It was a lie to get me to come back and let that doctor experiment on me and put his awful embryos inside me.”

  Mack’s eyebrows went up. It wasn’t clear to me what that meant. I went on anyway, not knowing what he was thinking.

  “I found out today that I’m pregnant.”

  And I thought his eyebrows were raised up high before.

  His eyes flashed. Fire would be tame to what I saw in his expression. Was it fury? Or maybe anguish? I couldn’t tell. But he steeled himself, sat still, and waited for me to continue with my story.

  “I broke into that doctor’s office and into his records and found a list of all the women he’s tried to impregnate. One list was labeled Zoe and the other was marked Jack.” His burning eyes now reflected something darker, more troubling to me. “Nikki’s name was on that list, and so was mine. Mack, I’m pregnant with a clone of your nephew Jack.”

  My stomach lurched, not knowing what he was thinking. He ducked down, stayed disconnected a moment, then lifted his head back up and the scary look was gone.

  “Kate, I am so sorry.”

  I was so relieved, I wanted to kiss him. He hadn’t told me I was nuts, or questioned me, or tried in any way to refute what I’d told him. The look in his eye was so sorrowful, it had to be genuine.

  “What do you think we should do?” he said.

  This time I did kiss him. He’d said what should we do, not what should I do.

  “I can’t abort a baby, Mack. It’s not his fault he’s here. It would be cruel. Besides, what are the chances of a cloned baby making it to term?”

  “Pretty small, it seems. I think it’s only happened once.”

  “Nikki.”

  “Yes.”

  “She had unusual circumstances that you and Schr…you think helped Charlotte develop normally, right?”

  “The meds. She took them throughout the pregnancy. If I knew what she was on, maybe we would be able to duplicate the process.”

  “You still don’t know?”

  “The chart’s missing. Medical Records has put a search on it. It will show up eventually.”

  “It needs to be sooner than eventually. I want to try.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I think so.”

  Mack took my hands in his and pulled me toward him. He held me and I felt the warmth and safety I’d been craving for the last century. But then I remembered Charlotte.

  “There’s another thing I haven’t told you about yet. Nikki’s baby—Anna’s baby—they found her.”

  His face lit up. “They did? That’s good ne—”

  “She’s dead, Mack. Dead. Dumped in a garbage heap.”

  “Oh, Kate, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “I went with Joe to ID her. It was awful. Just awful. Heartbreaking. If for nothing else, for Charlotte, I have to give this baby a chance.”

  “I love you, Kate.”

  “You do?”

  “I do.”

  “You know I love you,” I said.

  “No, I don’t know that.”

  “You don’t?”

  “How would I know?”

  “I think it all the time.”

  He raised an eyebrow again.

  “Okay, so that’s no surefire way of letting you know. But I figured you could tell, and I thought you weren’t so keen on the idea, so I didn’t mention it.”

  “My little Kate, so insecure and unsure of herself.”

  My little Kate. I liked that. Sounded so intimate.

  “If you love me, I’ll never be insecure again.”

  He stood and helped me to my feet. “Come with me,” he said in a sultry voice.

  We walked into his dark bedroom, hand in hand. He shut the door then took me over to the bed.

  “I love you, Bright Eyes, and I want you to be my wife.”

  I could just make out the outline of his features from the streetlight coming through his blinds. His expression was sincere.

  “Wife?”

  “We’ll do this together. Figure out some way, take what comes and deal with it as a team.”

  “What will we tell people?”

  “Nothing. We don’t have to tell anybody anything.”

  “Really? But they’ll thi
nk this is our baby.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  I flew into his embrace, wrapping my arms around him tightly enough to choke off his air.

  “I love you,” I said.

  He loosened my arms a little and sucked in some air. “I love you,” he repeated in a raspy voice.

  Then he kissed me like he’d never done before. Knowing he loved me enough to take me on with all my problems melted every misgiving that had taken up residence in my heart.

  I forgot every resolution I’d made to never be with a man again and began surrendering to his loving me. I wanted him to love me and to love him back.

  He unbuttoned my shirt, all the while kissing and stroking me like we were the only two people left on earth. I helped him off with his clothes, and we laid back onto his bed. He was so gentle and loving, nothing about what he did made me worry and hold back.

  “Jim, Jim,” Jackie’s voice came from the doorway.

  Mack froze. I withered. We could hear her scratching on the wall to find the light switch.

  “Jackie, don’t turn that light on.” The authority in his voice stopped her.

  “What’s going on, Jim?”

  “Jackie, go away and shut the door.”

  “I need you. My back’s in a spasm again. I need you to rub my back.”

  “Jackie, do as I say. Back out and go.”

  “Jim—”

  “Now!”

  I think she left. I wasn’t sure. I was melting into the mattress, becoming one with the bedspread. My ears roared so loudly, I couldn’t make any sense of anything I heard.

  Mack must have heard the door latch because he collapsed next to me. Air rushed out through his throat.

  “Oh, Kate, I am so sorry.”

  My voice came out a bit shaky. “What is she doing here?”

  “She moved in today.”

  “What?” I screeched.

  “It’s a long story. I was helping her move all day. I thought she was long asleep. Frankly, I forgot she was here.”

  “Forgot?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too.”