Our clone was coming along nicely.
We were down to a week until its delivery, but the ultrasounds showed a beautiful baby girl. At least, it looked fairly human. Who could tell anything from that fuzzy black and white image?
It didn’t matter. The important thing was that we were going to be a family soon. Peter and I would have a little addition to our household. We would be raising a contributing member of the next generation. Our little girl was heir to the human race.
“How is she?” Peter shook my knee, jostling me out of my daydreaming. “Is she okay?
“Who knows?” I muttered, taking his hand and squeezing my frustrations away. “All we can do is wait for them to let us see her.”
“No news is good news, Lance,” Peter said, looking into my eyes and smiling reassuringly. “If we haven’t heard anything, then your sister is fine.”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “I just wish that Dr. Wasserman was a little more sympathetic.”
“Save the miracles for the c-section,” Peter winked, and nodded past me. “Mom’s here.”
I looked to the hospital entrance, where Peter’s mother was strolling through. She dipped her head and wiggled her fingers at us, beaming. She was wearing a shawl with a summer dress, a fashion tragedy, but I loved her just the same.
“Hello Mother dear,” I exclaimed and she brightened noticeably. Peter had told me how much she enjoyed it when I referred to her as my mother. I scooped the tiny elderly woman into my arms and squeezed her so hard her back adjusted with a crack.
“Oh!” she exclaimed delightfully. She was slightly breathless when I set her back down, “Thank you dear.” Her eyebrows jumped, “How is she?”
“Dr. Was-A-Man won’t let us see her,” Peter stated, folding his arms over his chest in that cute pouty way of his.
Mom’s voice was almost a growl, “Asshole.”
“I think he’s still sore,” I said.
“Of course he is,” mom rubbed my upper arms absentmindedly, looking distant. “He’s still pissed about you two out-foxing him.”
Dr. Wasserman was on a crusade to keep same-sex couples from having children. When he found out about Peter and me, he warned all the fertility clinics to turn us and anyone associated with us away. Luckily my sister, who was our intended surrogate from the start, was a great liar and convinced the cloning clinic the child was for her.
You should have seen the look on Dr. Wasserman’s face when he found out he was our obstetrician. Not only was Lacey carrying a child for us, but my sister carried the double-whammy of being HIV positive to boot. Even the least bigoted fertility clinics in the world wouldn’t impregnate someone with AIDS. So Lacey didn’t tell them that either.
She did tell Dr. Wasserman, however, as it was crucial she begin therapy to prevent transmitting the virus to her fetus. The chances of Lacey passing the virus on to her child were now only a fraction of a percent. If our daughter caught AIDS, we would sue Wasserman into the gutter. Only his negligence could let her become infected now.
And if he didn’t know that, we made it a point to remind him every chance we got. We could have gone with another obstetrician, but Dr. Wasserman was the best, and we wanted our daughter to have the best of everything, even if that meant dealing with an insufferably prejudiced prick.
“Come on,” mom waved us to follow. “Let’s go see the little lady.”
Peter and I exchanged knowing looks. It was a relief to have mom here, a former RN who had little patience for hospital bureaucracy after dealing with it for 30 years. She took us to the elevator and hit the appropriate floor.
“But visiting hours…?” I began, but mom ignored me.
The nurse managing the floor gave us an alarmed look that turned to resignation when she saw mom. If it were just Peter and I, she probably would have called security. Mom marched past her like she had every right to be there, while Peter and I followed, trying not to look guilty.
We came to the door, and mom stood aside, nodding me in, “There you go.”
“That was too easy,” I said with a smirk and went inside.
Sis was reading a book, Sallinger’s “Catcher in the Rye.” She was peaceful in her concentration. Her black hair pulled back into a bun, a hairstyle she had never worn before getting pregnant. Come to think of it, I had never seen her read before getting pregnant either.
I noticed the pair of headphones cradling her swollen belly and asked, “What’s she listening to?”
Lacey looked up from her reading and her face brightened, “Sonic Youth. I was introducing her to Siouxi and the Banshee’s earlier. You know, working my way through my music collection.” She slipped the headphones off and whispered to her belly, “Uncle Lance is here sweetie.”
“She’s gonna have excellent taste in music from the get-go,” I noted.
“Oh!” Lacey put her hand on her belly where the baby had apparently just kicked her. “She gets so excited whenever big brother Lance comes around.”
I smiled and tossed my head, “She’s probably just upset ‘cause you killed her tunes.”
“So which is it,” mom said, announcing her presence, “big brother or uncle Lance?”
“How ‘bout ‘Daddy?’’ Peter asked.
“Or ‘Mommy,’” Lacey said with a smirk.
“It’s ‘Daddy,’” I asserted. “Technically it might be brother or uncle or whatever, but it’s certainly not ‘Mommy.’ My genes might express themselves as gay, but they don’t express themselves with a vagina.”
“It’s not genetics for me,” Peter said proudly to my sis. “I was totally straight before I met your brother.”
“Straight as a banana,” I joshed.
“And twice as fruity,” mom chimed in.
“So you’re nurture,” Lacey said, pointing to Peter, “and you’re nature.” She pointed to me.
“I can’t help being gay,” I said with an unapologetic shrug. “I think it is my genes. You know some evolutionary theorists think it’s a side effect of having an overly sexual mother. Even though the gay kids don’t reproduce, the over-sexed daughters make up for it by having plenty of children.”
“Great,” Lacey rolled her eyes. “So my clone’s gonna be a nymphomaniac too.”
“Uh…” I looked up into my head for a response.
Sis pulled me close to her, “You better buy her a vibrator.”
I nodded, “Sure. On her sixteenth birthday. You got it.”
“Better make it her fourteenth,” Lacey advised. Then sat up, urging me, “And for godssakes, stress protection.”
“Okay.”
“I mean that!” she grabbed my sleeve and shook me.
I nodded with more sincerity, “Okay!”
“Condoms!”
“Yes.”
“Femdoms!”
“Ye—! Huh?”
“Female condoms, like saran wrap,” Lacey explained. “Promise?”
I held up my right hand, “On my honor.”
Lacey fell back onto the bed, looking distant, “Don’t let her turn out like me.”
“Now that I won’t promise,” I said, shaking my head.
Lacey’s eyes came over to me, questioning.
“My sister’s eclectic, artistic, a free spirit,” I explained. “She’s tough, independent, brilliant, witty… She’s… She’s…”
Lacey chuckled a little as I struggled for more compliments.
“A ray of starshine in the lives of everyone she meets,” Peter added helpfully.
“Sugar and spice and everything nice,” mom giggled.
“Not letting your clone grow up to express her true nature would be like…” my mind found the metaphor easily, “cutting the buds off a rose bush before they have a chance to bloom.”
The look Lacey gave me told me she wasn’t buying completely into what I had said, but I knew she would think about it later, that it would stick with her, and probably warm her heart as things got worse.
I let my words sink in. “You totally rock, L
acey,” I gently nudged her arm with my fist. “So what if you can’t keep it in your pants?”
That got a chuckle out of her, but she quickly stifled it, looking past me. I followed her eyes to the door, where Dr. Wasserman stood. His eyes were thin slits behind an impossible nose. That nose was the mantelpiece of many laugh-in sessions amongst the four of us. It came straight out from between those beady eyes and then dropped off like a cliff down his face, curling under to reattach at his upper lip. It wasn’t a nose. It was a beak.
Peter surmised it was the reason Dr. Wasserman was such a bitter person. The Doctor was jealous of Peter’s and my relationship. After all, there was no way the man was getting laid with a honker like that.
“Hello Mr. Was-a-ma—ouf!” Peter sucked air as mom put an elbow in his stomach.
“Hello Dr. Wasserman,” Mom covered. “How is our little patient today?”
“Levels of the virus are staying satisfactorily low in her blood tests,” the doctor said, looking over Lacey’s chart. “The chances of the child contracting the virus are still negligible.”
“I know we’re at the 38 week mark,” I said. “I guess that means…?”
Dr. Wasserman nodded, “I will be scheduling a cesarean sometime in the next few days.”
“Few days?” Peter scoffed. “Don’t you think that’s cutting it a little close? What if she goes into labor?”
“Not likely,” Wasserman’s tone indicated he did not appreciate Peter challenging his wisdom on this. “Even if she does go into labor, we can still have a cesarean. After the delivery, we’ll test the infant for the virus.”
“I’ll breathe a sigh of relief then,” I said. “No matter what the outcome. It’s the uncertainty that’s killing me.”
“Me too,” little sis said and I squeezed her hand.
“If it’s certainty you’re after, then you’ll have to wait six more months after our initial test,” Dr. Wasserman said with his trademark insensitivity. “The test we conduct within 48 hours of birth only detects 40 percent of infected infants.” He finally looked at me, but it didn’t make him anymore human, “At the sixth-month, we’ll know for certain if the infection spread to the child.” He looked at Lacey and raised a finger at her, “We’ve been over the post-birth precautions.”
Lacey nodded, “No breastfeeding.”
“We got one of those life-like breasts you can fill with formula and hang on your chest,” Peter chimed in proudly, making a cupping shape over his right nipple, which I noticed was hard.
Dr. Wasserman just looked at him.
Peter winked at Lacey, “We’ll let you borrow it.”
“No more ultrasounds?” mom prompted then.
“There’s nothing more to learn from them,” Dr. Wasserman said, and I was surprised he did not take the opportunity to remind us of how limited his testing options were. For instance, amniocentesis would break the placenta’s membrane and expose the fetus to Lacey’s blood, risking infection. So there were some things we couldn’t test for, but the baby looked wonderful on the ultrasound.
Dr. Wasserman restored Lacey’s chart to its hook at the foot of her bed, “You’ve done very well, taking the Zidovudine and protease inhibitors to keep the virus at bay.”
“I have to,” Lacey shrugged slightly. “I have a responsibility to the little me.”
Dr. Wasserman nodded, “I thank God that you have been so responsible. I maintain that it was very irresponsible of you to have yourself impregnated knowing you carried the virus, even more irresponsible for the clinic that performed the procedure, but I think all will turn out for the be—“
“Yeah, but if Lacey wanted to get pregnant the normal way,” Peter broke in, “you wouldn’t be able to stop her. Great big medical corporations get to decide who gets fertilized and cloned--”
“I see that as their responsibility,” Dr. Wasserman interjected.
“—but anyone AIDS-infected, physically challenged, homosexual or otherwise deemed genetically inferior can still reproduce the old fashioned way,” Peter’s voice almost cracked the way it did when he was about to lose his temper.
Wasserman frowned and nodded grimly. “If it were up to me,” he said, “I would have that option stripped from a few of them as well.”
Peter’s eyes were wide.
Mom spoke up then, coming over to take Lacey’s hand, “Preventing people from reproducing would require sterilizations, eugenics. Those are methods far too inhumane to ever consider.”
“I have misspoken,” Dr. Wasserman said, he walked towards the door, but paused there, turning to address us once more. “You are correct that we cannot forcibly prevent people from reproducing. At the same time, private enterprise has the right to deny service to clients it does not want reproducing.
“Think about this,” Wasserman was urging us. “I’m not saying I’m right, but you have to acknowledge that civilization must take a position on the matter. Medical science gives people who cannot reproduce the power to have offspring, who will also need medical science to reproduce. We are birthing the next generation of medical patients.
“Then consider the uneducated are far out-breeding the educated,” Wasserman continued. “If any degree of human intelligence is genetic, then we are breeding our civilization into stupidity. What about all the people medical science allows to live despite their fatal mutations? These bad genes are spreading throughout our species. If any catastrophe were to occur to strip civilization of our medical supports, we would be doomed.”
“So that doesn’t give you the right to decide who gets to have children and who doesn’t!” Peter snapped. His face was red and his fists were clenched. I put my hand lightly on his shoulder.
Wasserman simply looked at him, “I’m not saying for certain the solution is to regulate breeding. I’m just asking you to think about it. We always concern ourselves with what kind of a world we are leaving our children. Think about who’s reproducing,” his eyes shifted involuntarily to Lacey--only for a moment, but everyone noticed it, “and what kind of children we are leaving to our world.”
“Prick,” Peter spat at Dr. Wasserman’s back as the man left the room.
“Well that was a downer,” Lacey said, kind of stunned.
“Don’t think about it,” mom urged, rubbing her arm. “It’s not something you should let bog you down right now.”
“Because I’ve already done the irresponsible thing,” Lacey squeezed tears from her eyes.
“You’ve done a generous thing,” mom put her arm around Lacey, trying to gently shake her out of her grief. “You’re giving a couple without a chance at having children of their own a baby girl to love and raise.”
“But that’s selfish,” Lacey sobbed. “I just wanted another chance… a chance to get it right.”
“We’ll get it right,” I promised, sitting down beside her bed. “I’ll make up for our parent’s mistakes.”
“They won’t even talk to us.”
“All the more evidence of their being bad parents,” mom said.
Lacey looked at me then, “What if they won’t let you adopt her?”
“You’re my sister,” I said gently, but firmly. “They have to let me adopt your baby. I’m next of kin and I’m a fanfuckingtastic pillar of the community.”
“I know,” Lacey huffed, “but what about you being lifepartners with Peter?”
“What about me being in a stable relationship?” I prompted innocently. I knew what she was talking about.
“What if they won’t let you adopt because you’re gay?” Lacey asked at last.
Peter broke in then, his tone was as if he were stating the obvious, “Then we’ll move to Canada.”
A slight bark of laughter cracked through Lacey’s sobbing at this last statement.
Peter came over and put his arm around my waist. I leaned back against him, appreciating his open affection. We were going to be a family soon. I believed it, and looking at my sister looking at my lifepartner and me, I knew s
he believed it too. We had a whole lifetime together of me taking care of her, and we were going to embark on a second one soon.
“It’s funny,” Lacey said, her eyelids drooping, suddenly exhausted from this outburst, but her expression was transformed into one of pure joy.
“What’s funny?” I smiled because she was smiling.
“There’s an old Faith No More lyric I always liked,” Lacey said after reflecting a moment. “’Growing a life within a life, the lips of wonder kiss you inside.’ I always loved that imagery."
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s pretty.”
Lacey giggled a little, apparently suddenly intoxicated with the thought that had occurred to her, “I’m growing a me within a me.”
“So it’s a homunculus—owf!” Peter was cut off with a jab to the midsection.
“Peter!” mom warned.
Lacey and I didn’t notice. We just stared into each other’s eyes, pouring warmth into each other. I leaned in close to her belly, placing my hands on it. The little one inside kicked in greeting.
“Welcome to the family,” I whispered. “It’s only going to get weirder here on out.”
dana’s clone