I squeezed my eyes shut. They burned. They felt so dry.
Swish-pah, swish-pah. A ventilator? Where was I? The vent was pushing my chest.
Oh, my God! Was I on a ventilator? What was I doing on a vent?
I struggled to lift my heavy eyelids. If I raised my eyebrows all the way to my hairline, I could get my eyes open enough to see a crack of light.
And Mack. Mack was the one holding my hand. I squeezed as hard as I could, using every bit of concentration. I pressed with enough energy to shatter a stone. And I think all that work gave just enough of a twinge that Mack felt it and looked right at me.
His gorgeous indigo eyes. They glistened with tears. He looked at me like he hadn’t seen me in centuries. Like he thought he’d never see me again.
Whoa. He looked at me like he thought I’d died. Now I remembered. I thought I’d died too. It all came back. My eyes started crying too.
Howard? I tried to say. I couldn’t talk with that tube through my larynx. So I tried to mouth his name.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he crooned, comforting himself as much as me. “You’re okay now. Okay.”
I shook my head, as much as I could. I tried to mouth Howard again, but the tube was in the way. I looked sideways with my eyes, to signal I was talking about our baby down the hallway.
“You’re safe now. You’re going to be okay. And Howard’s fine, he’s fine. She didn’t hurt him.”
The relief was huge. That alone let me take a breath deeper than I could before.
With that little bit of communication, Mack dropped his forehead onto the side rail, like a guy who’d thought his wife was dead and just found out she wasn’t. It took the effort of lifting a mountain, but I got my hand to move to his head and I touched him while he stayed there a bit and collected himself.
He lifted his head and gave me the most pitiful smile I’d ever seen. But his eyes were cleared of the deep pain and fear.
He kissed my forehead, then ran out to tell the people I’d come out of it, that I was okay, that I needed my vent turned down, that I was okay, that they should cancel the MRI, that I was okay. I could hear him clear as a church bell on an Austrian hilltop. He was happy now.
My neurologist came, my internist, the respiratory tech, the nurses, Dr. Chen. Pretty much everyone Mack could think of calling was paged to come see me and do something for me. I think that even Al, the guard from the hospital entrance, poked his head into my cubical for a second.
It wasn’t long before they removed the ET tube and let me take over the breathing thing on my own. And soon after that, I lost the IVs too. Before I knew it, all I felt was exhaustion and the burning in my episiotomy.
I’d come full circle.
***
When I got discharged, I left the hospital for what I hoped was the last time. At least as a patient. I’d been one of those far more often than was good for me. I’d had my fill of it for at least the next two hundred years or so.
My maternity stay had only been extended by forty-eight hours. Once the Pavulon wore off, everything went back to normal. I had to thank God that my wonderful husband had come in when he had. I hadn’t been out long enough to suffer any permanent damage.
Mack took Howard and me home. We had a warm reception from Ollie. It was a special time. Though Mack had a melancholy air drifting around him. He was still trying to deal with all he’d learned about his sister.
Jackie was being held without bond and would probably be in prison for a very long time to come. She’d orchestrated the kidnappings, the break-in at Uncle Howard’s, and even the phone threats to try to get me away from Mack, getting Carl’s handyman Jerry, the scary-hairy guy, to do the dirty work for her. She didn’t realize I’d thought Jerry’s phone threats meant to leave Carl alone, not Mack. Guess she should have supervised her stooge a little better. Made sure he carried out her wishes a little more accurately.
But if she had, things might have been worse. Jackie seemed more malicious than Jerry. Though he’d actually done everything, it was apparent Jackie had planned the worst of everything.
The immense hate she carried inside her even for her own children was painful to realize. As the police searched her belongings for evidence, detectives found photo albums of Jack and Zoe. Jackie had viciously defaced their portraits. Scornful, contemptuous words had been scrawled in the margins around the pictures. They found an illegal stash of narcotics with her things. Mostly prescription pain pills but some street drugs too. Mixed with her instability, it was a recipe for disaster.
They also found selfies Jackie had tweeted of her with Jerry, who they charged with shooting Anna and killing Howard and Charlotte. The photos were posted before Jackie was paralyzed, and the two were obviously more than just acquaintances. They appeared to be vacationing together at some tropical resort. Somewhere along the way Jerry had changed from Carl’s handyman to Jackie’s candy man and lover.
Through all the cleaning and digging, Mack found a page torn from Nikki’s chart with her vital statistics on it. He came to the conclusion that Jackie had Nikki’s chart hidden with her and when we unexpectedly showed up at Mack’s condo in the middle of the day, she just pretended the chart had been among Mack’s things. She had had it all the while, a side benefit of Jerry’s job in Medical Records.
The regret Mack felt for having trusted her so entirely would probably never completely leave him. He realized how much he’d fed into her wiles by always sharing with her the details of his work, of Nikki’s situation, of Carl’s activities in his office and lab. He’d thought she was interested in his work and life. He’d thought he was helping her stay connected to the outside world she’d lost her way in. He’d thought she was healthy and normal.
He was having a hard time letting it go, not holding himself responsible for her deterioration. One concession he made, which helped him move a little closer toward healing, was to offer to Anna and Joe the chance to adopt Jackie’s baby. Jackie lost all parental rights and the judge gave Mack custody.
Because she was Charlotte’s genetic sister, after much thought and consideration, Anna and Joe decided they would like to adopt her and give her the love and home they had so wanted to provide for Charlotte. Soon after she moved in with them, she began to thrive and respond like I’d never seen her do before. And Anna began to improve at even greater speeds with the new vitality a young life brought back into their home.
With all the cleaning and rearranging for our new life, it was time for me to empty my apartment and start fresh as Mrs. James Mackenzie in a new home. We found a wonderful brownstone not far from the hospital. Mack and I were both eager to move in and settle down as a family.
Ollie and I had lived in my apartment over ten years and had way too much junk to sort through. I tackled a pile of debris, trying to figure out what to keep and what to let go. Next to Howard in his infant seat sat Ollie in a bright circle of hot sunshine, tall and proud of the family’s new addition. He was giving me tips about what he thought should go.
I held up the poster of George Clooney, which I’d taken down from the boarded kitchen window.
“What do you think, Ollie? Should this go with us or not?”
Ollie didn’t have to even think about it. He’d wanted it out years ago.
“Okay.” I stuck it in the huge black bag of trash. Even though I disagreed, I wanted to avoid disharmony in our new home. “How about this?” I held up a copy of People magazine all about Jennifer Lawrence that Ollie had asked me to pick up for him when I went for some groceries one day last winter. “Can we toss this yet?”
He nodded, but only reluctantly.
I showed him the Curious George porcelain monkey, but not to give him a vote. I’d glued it back together with superglue as best as I could. “This is going with us, like it or not. I know you’re jealous of him, but he’ll never take your place. I adore you. Even though he takes way less maintenance than you.”
Ollie huffed indignantly, but he was mollified by my declaratio
n of love. And it probably helped that George now sported a crack down the middle of his face.
When we finished going through the closet and filled the giant Hefty bag, I threw it like Santa’s sack over my shoulder, hoisted Howard’s infant seat with the other hand, and told Ollie to keep cleaning while Howard and I went out to dump the garbage.
After heaving a large part of my past into the Dumpster, I sat down on the cement block under the humming power lines, settling Howard next to me, who was blissfully sleeping away his infancy.
I reflected back over the year since I’d first met Nikki and how that had brought me to know Mack. It was hard to believe all that had happened in just that short amount of time. It was already summer again. The cicadas were back in high gear, thrumming their chorus into the thick hot air, which grew more oppressive each passing day.
I thought again what might have become of Nikki. I would always wonder. She and I had a connection. We two had given birth to the only known successful human clones. And hopefully it would remain that no more would follow. Or the attempts. What happened to Sheila was too horrendous to repeat, or even chance.
Mack was putting together all he could gather about what Carl had attempted without him. He planned to turn over all the information to the appropriate people to do with as they saw fit. It was part of the deal he was working out with the authorities. By agreeing to cooperate, he reduced his punishment to a month’s suspension without pay, plus another six months of probation. The relief was huge to learn for certain that Mack never did more than a little cloning after it was banned. I felt a bit guilty for having ever suspected him of doing worse.
Of course, we still didn’t know, and probably never would, what had caused Nikki and me to have success, when no one else anywhere could duplicate the process. And it was probably better that way. No mad scientist could be tempted to use that knowledge to try again.
“Hey, Bright Eyes.”
I looked up and Mack was peering out the back entrance of my building. Today he wore his shiny giraffe tie with a pale yellow button-down shirt and his snug Levi’s. Mmm, hmm, he looked good.
“Hi. How’d you know where we were?”
“Ollie told me.”
You see? I wasn’t making it up. The Himalayan talked. “Is he working? I told him to keep working.”
“Hard at work. Has most of the bathroom cleaned.”
“Good.”
He came and settled next to me under the power line tower.
“What’re you doing? Cooking under this radiation?” he asked with a chuckle.
“Just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Nikki, mostly. I sat out here with her when she lived here. It was right after she had Charlotte.”
Mack listened to me reminisce, watching Howard sleep peacefully while I spoke.
“She had the funniest slippers. Big fuzzy pink pig slippers. They clashed a little with her blue hair, but I wasn’t going to tell her.”
“She’s a mystery.”
“The whole thing is.”
“Yup.”
“You know, we both lived here while we were pregnant. Maybe our pregnancies had nothing to do with those meds.”
“Hmm.”
“Maybe there is something in the water. Ever think of that?”
“Very scientific. I’ll take that into consideration.”
“You never know.”
“No, you never know. Wanna go to Gino’s and get some pizza for supper?”
“Sure. Howard’s starving.”
“No, he’s not. He’s sound asleep.”
“Mother’s intuition. You just wait.”
“Okay, but not here. This humming is getting to me. I can’t believe you’ve lived here all these years without growing a third arm or something. You never know what this low level radiation can do to a person’s cell division.”
“Well, maybe I could use a third arm now that I’m a mother.”
“I like you the way you are, Bright Eyes.”
Howard suddenly woke up and began squawking like an angry cat.
“Thanks,” I said over the new noise. Mack stretched over and gave me a sweet kiss. Then I scrambled to grab Howard’s pacifier and try to get it in his gaping mouth, adjust his diaper, and move his hat back over his eyes to block the bright sunshine. “Okay, then,” I hollered over the deafening pitch of Howard’s wailing. “Better hurry and sweep me away to a less radioactive place while you can. The idea of an extra hand is sounding better every minute.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cheri Gillard has been a freelance writer and editor for over twenty years, working for several publishing houses and companies writing or editing projects, books, magazines, and curricula. She is an Indie B.R.A.G. Medallion recipient for her first novel, Chloe’s Guardian, Book One in the Nephilim Redemption series.
Before writing, she was an obstetric and pediatric Registered Nurse, but she hung up her nurse's cap when she gave birth to quadruplets. She is also a musician, regularly playing violin with her group, Acoustic Springs, a folk-style band, and in other venues as opportunities arise. She lives in Colorado with her family.
THANK YOU
Alie Benson, for reading and giving your ideas, insight, and for catching what I couldn’t. And taking chocolate as payment.
Spencer Gillard, for all your endless help making my cover. And for answering frantic texts about how to do certain things on software I had no business messing with.
Stephanie Wilcox, Kristin Cunningham, and Terri Gates, for being hand models and tolerating my mania and sudden crazy ideas, and dropping everything so I could photograph your limbs.
Jason, my husband, for playing along when I woke him up at 5:00 a.m. and asked him to let me photograph his hand, and then again when I asked him to meet me on his lunch break to reshoot because I hadn’t gotten quite exactly what I’d needed.
Dear Reader:
Thank you for reading The Clone’s Mother. If you enjoyed it, won’t you please take a moment to leave me a review on Amazon?
Check out my other books—from the Nephilim Redemption series, Chloe’s Guardian and Chloe’s Watcher.
The third book, Chloe’s Odyssey, is due for release in the fall of 2016.
Keep tabs on what’s happening with me and my books by following me on Twitter, Facebook, and on my webpage, cherigillard.com, where you can e-mail me directly, if you’d like. I’ll post when the third in this series is due for release, as well as the upcoming releases of several other titles I already have in progress.
Again, thank you for reading my book. If you liked it, please tell a friend. That is one of the greatest compliments you can give me!
Cheri Gillard
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