Chapter Five
Monday was an off day. Nathan woke up, walked out to breakfast still in the nude. He said “Oh, by the way, I got you an appointment at a place called “Lifewind. They’re in the desert. Your appointment is Wednesday.”
She would have to go alone, since Nathan would be up in San Francisco playing with his team. Full GPS directions arrived in her email. She would have to travel way south, into wine country. How should she dress for this type of an appointment, she wondered. Something simple, yet tasteful and elegant should do it. She found the perfect white halter dress in her closet.
On Wednesday she packed a cooler with lots of drinks and set out for the forty-five mile drive to the desert. She also wore her strongest sunglasses. Even so, the strong mid-day sun glaring off all the fields of solar panels caused her to squint, bringing on a headache. The windmills she passed reminded her of Holland.
Lifewind turned out to be much different from any medical office or professional building she’d ever seen. Tall fences surrounded the complex, topped with barbed wire as if it was a maximum-security prison. When she turned in from the main road, she saw a guard tower. A big man in a Canadian mounty style hat with mirrored sunglasses approached her window. “Good afternoon, ma’am,” he said. “Do you have an appointment?”
“Yes,” she said, and showed him the confirmation she had printed out back home.
He looked at it thoroughly. “May I see some identification?”
She handed her card to him and he swiped it on a reader.
“Thank you very much.” He nodded to her. “The road curves around and then comes to a fork. You want to follow the sign for “visitors.”
When she did as he said, she felt disoriented because she could not see a building, just something that looked like a raised bunker. From the air, she thought, it could have been mistaken for a mound of dirt. She came upon the fork in the road, turned in the direction marked “visitors” and discovered that the road sloped downward into an underground garage. As the car angled downward, she worried for a moment about temporary blindness from her eyes adjusting to the dim light. Thankfully, though, they lit it well. A stout, dark-skinned and dark haired woman awaited her at another guard post at the bottom of the grade.
“Can I see your confirmation?” she said when she approached the car. Suella handed it to her, she glanced at it, handing it back to her along with a green slip printed with a number. “That’s your spot for today. You’ll find it one level down. Just follow the arrows.” Suella continued on and noticed several official looking hybrid SUVs and low slung sports cars parked in spaces marked “Reserved.”
It surprised her when the driveway sloped downward into the next level, but she found her space quickly and easily. She parked amid rows of average looking Toyotas and Fords. A two level parking lot was one thing, but when she saw the doors leading to the inside of the offices, she found an elevator. Her appointment would take place in an office another three floors down!
After the elevator ride, she found a glass partitioned office with tobacco brown carpeted floors. A receptionist with a smile, beautifully coiffed hair and a business suit straight out of Vogue greeted her. “Mrs. Worthy? It’s very nice to meet you. I’m Jackie. Your appointment is going to be with Dr. Allende. She’ll be here in a moment. Have a seat, make yourself comfortable, and let me know if you need anything.”
Dr. Allende soon entered the lobby to collect Suella. She extended her hand and in a soprano voice, introduced herself. She was small, crispy dressed, and wore her hair in a blunt style just below the ears. Her dark eyes flashed.
Suella couldn’t believe it. “How old are you?” she blurted out.
The doctor smiled pleasantly, as if she’d grown used to such reactions from people. She said “I’m thirty. Do you want to follow me back to the office?”
“Sure.” As they walked along past doors and offices, Suella still couldn’t believe what she was seeing: a girl doctor.
They arrived in an office filled with gleaming glass desktops and bookshelves filled with scholarly volumes. Suella wondered where they kept the computer until Dr. Allende sat down and pressed a button. A small cylinder rose from the desk, along with a glass panel that looked like a teleprompter, as used in television. Of course! They were so up to date, they had the new projectables. A keyboard flashed under the doctor’s fingers, and images beamed onto the small pane of glass.
Once both of the women had settled themselves, the doctor started to speak, while glancing back and forth at the text on the screen. Suella recognized the intake form she’d filled out online. “I’m going to ask some additional questions, just some standard things, and we’ll go from there.”
“Sounds fine,” Suella asked, feeling herself start to tense up.
“Do you have any children right now?”
She thought she answered all that on the intake form. “None.”
“How long have you and your husband tried to conceive?”
Suella raised a hand. “I don’t understand? I thought I answered all of this.
In the intake form.”
The doctor glanced at the forms on the screen and back at Suella. She smiled at her. “I realize that Mrs. Worthy, but I always like to get to know my clients on a personal level, too. I apologize if I offended you.”
“That’s all right. It’s just that, I can’t conceive. That’s what brought me here, to seek your help. I’m sure you’ve spoken to many other women in the same boat.”
“Yes, I have. Have you and your husband tried in-vitro, surrogacy programs, or adoption?”
“No,” Suella said. “Do you want to know the real reason I’m interested in doing this?”
The doctor angled herself toward her, and leaned back in her chair, opening herself directly to her. She nodded.
Suella began. “I’ve always wanted a child who would be just like me. This seems like the best chance for something like that to happen.”
She expected a flash of bewilderment to cross Dr. Allende’s face, but instead she took a moment to consider her words and smiled. After the rest of their pleasantries, Dr. Allende showed her a video telling how the whole process worked. Suella watched cartoon figures of a harvested egg, which was stripped of its nucleus. Zygotes and telomeres flashed on the screen, and the use of a cartoon needle and laser beam made the whole thing sound so simple. When the egg had been artificially gestated that way an electronic conveyor would transfer it to the uterus of a healthy female who would carry it to term. The baby could be born under regular conditions in a birthing suite or a hospitals OB unit.
“For the next meeting,” Dr. Allende said, “I’ll need both your husband and the woman who’s going to carry the child for you.”
Suella thanked her, shook her hand and looked for the elevator and the parking lot for her car and the long ride home. Before the three of them would meet with the doctor and the other support personnel, Suella decided that she wanted another meeting with Toni, alone. When she arrived home, she called her. “Let’s have dinner. I want to discuss something with you and I know you must have lots of questions for me.”
They met at a diner away from the busy intersections and the beach parking lots. Suella expected a dressed-down Toni, with a clean face or sunglasses. She’d known actresses who liked to keep an extremely low profile when they were out in public. Not Toni. She wore a silky tank top with clinging black jeans and glamorous, tall sandals. Her makeup had been applied with a deft hand. She could have been between takes while filming the latest “B” movie she appeared in. Toni kept her eyes low and her mouth a straight, thin line.
A bland waitress took their orders for drinks. Suella said “How do you feel about our offer?”
Toni shrugged. She possessed absolutely clear skin without any wrinkles. Fair skin. Not only had she broken tradition by refusing a tan, either artifi
cial or real, but she also appeared to keep most of her meals down. “It’s very generous but I have to tell you I’m pretty nervous.”
“Why? Would you be missing any work?” She and Nathan had tried to arrive at a figure comparable to what Toni would have earned on one of her projects.
“Not really,” she replied. “Besides, I could still do voice. And there’s always face work for pregnant women, believe it or not.”
“Good, I’m glad.”
“It’s just that,” Toni said, narrowing her eyes. “I’ve never done this before. I’ve never been pregnant.”
Suella reached out to pat her on the hand. For a moment she didn’t know what to say, and the two women just looked at each other and smiled. “This is the greatest thing anyone’s ever done for me,” she managed, finally. The waitress arrived and took the rest of their order. Suella decided to eat light, just soup and a salad. Toni ordered a supreme hamburger basket with fries. Yes, Toni definitely broke with tradition. “When our child is born, you can be as close to her as you like.”
“That’s nice of you,” Toni said. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”
“Well, I have. If I had a baby, I know there’s always part of me that would want to be there for her, watch her develop into an adult, see the kind of person she would become.”
Toni blinked, her nose wrinkling. “How do you know it’s going to be a ‘she?’”
The question hit Toni like a punch in the stomach. “This is cloning,” she said, straining to maintain her composure. “It’s going to be a clone of me.”
Toni nodded.
Suella insisted on watching the harvest. Her million dollars covered five attempts. Eggs, with the nuclei stripped, came from Toni and a couple of other donors. Suella knew she had provided several cell cultures. Though she had been warned that it would be boring and tedious, she wanted to be there to watch the doctors try to create a miracle for her.
They performed the operation in a sterile room, with the four doctors wearing full scrubs. With the clinical fabric and the stainless steel instruments, to Suella, it looked like a sterile cocoon under the observation glass. All of the doctors peered through binocular-style microscopes, manipulating their instruments on an area that was about the size of a saucer.
Suella felt a heart-stopping kind of stillness about her as she looked on. She was the only one in the observation theatre. While it was quiet in there, it was not completely soundproof. She could hear whispers and clicking instruments filtering up from the suite below. Since they wore head to toe scrubs the doctors acquired an eerie sameness to them, such as monks. She knew that Dr. Allende was down there and she could only tell who she was because she was smaller than the other doctors.
Suella told herself again that the actual procedure was very simple. Dr. Allende had explained it to her three times. Get an egg, remove the nucleus from it, obtain a body cell, from herself in this case. Fuse the egg and the body cell with electricity and stimulate them to divide. When it becomes an embryo, implant it into the uterus of the woman who would gestate it to term. While she looked down at the doctors, ten minutes passed before she realized that they were standing still, staring down through the microscopes. They continued whispering.
She stared at them for such a long time that her neck muscles began to hurt. Finally, one of the doctors turned the switch on his microscope, dropped the mask down from his face and started to walk out of the room. The other doctors followed, one by one switching off their microscopes. Soon, Suella was looking down at an empty operating suite. She scrambled out of there and ran down the steps to the main floor. Dr, Allende had taken off her cap and seemed bleary-eyed when Suella found her.
“What happened?” she asked the doctor.
Dr Allende sighed, and through the concerned expression on her face, she gave her answer. Yet she spelled it out for Suella anyway. “We’re going to have to try again.”
“Today?”
“Yes, today. We all need to take a break, though. For at least an hour.”
The doctor started to walk away, in the direction of a lounge, but Suella gently put a hand on her wrist. “I just want to know. Was it even close?”
The doctor forced a smile that came out weak and sublime. “Suella, it takes time and extreme patience. It’ll all come out fine.”
She decided that it was the best she could hope for. While she tried to distract herself with a chicken oriental salad in the lounge, thoughts of failure dogged her. A million dollars, and she could not be guaranteed a successful embryo. Would it cost her a million dollars to find out she simply wasn’t meant to be a mother? The thought tore at her. By the end of her break, she tossed half of the chicken salad in the trash, unable to eat any more. She tried opening her notebook to try to catch up on some work, but knew that half-hearted energy would produce half-hearted results. After just a half hour of that, she walked back to the observation room to wait for the doctors.
When the doctors returned, they took their positions around the table again, and peered into their microscopes. Suella tried to shift herself around in her seat so that she could remain in the same position for a long time, watching them. After a heartbreaking hour and a half, her spirits sank when the first doctor dropped her face mask and switched off the microscope. As they all methodically followed her, Suella wondered if the third time would be a charm.
An hour later, she followed the same ritual all over again, with the same results. She looked down at her phone. It was five o’clock. This time, she could not find Dr. Allende on her way to the lounge. Instead the oldest, tallest, gray-haired doctor intercepted her. “We’re just going to have to try again tomorrow,” he said.
“There was three attempts today. Does that mean…” Suella said.
“Yes,” the doctor said, finishing the sentence for her. “We’ll just have to hope for the best. We should know by noon.”
To Suella, he might as well have said “You have cancer.” How on earth would she ever sleep tonight? She took a deep breath. Tomorrow’s attempt would be successful. It had to be. The cell would start to divide. Toni was at the ready. Suella called her while she drove through the desert on the way home. After a couple of sentences had been spoken between them, Toni said “You don’t sound good.”
“None of the embryos took. But they’re going to try again tomorrow.” She sighed.
“Then there’s hope.”
“Yes.”
The two women stayed on the line for several moments, as Suella watched windmills pass by. “I need you here tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
Nathan called her almost immediately after that. His words came in short bursts, as if he’d just run around the baseball field perimeter. “Wish, wish I could be there.”
“It’s okay, honey. I understand.” She heard a popping sound behind him and checked the time. “Where are you?”
“In the bullpen, watching the kid get ready. God, I wish I was there.”
She smiled. “We’ll have a good reunion when you get back.”
Over the next few miles, Suella realized that no one in her family knew. Part of the paperwork she’d signed stated that she’d have to keep quiet if all of the attempts failed. She shrugged. Maybe it was better for them not to know. The next morning, as she drove to the center, she forced herself to think about several painful things. What if the day’s first attempt misfired? That would hang everything on the doctor’s final attempt. She wasn’t sure if she could handle all that pressure and the shattering conclusion that it had all failed. Way back in her youth she’d been baptized and confirmed Roman Catholic. She’d even attended parochial school until the eighth grade. In all the years since, she’d hardly ever gone to mass, even on the Holy Days. She and Nathan had been married before a justice of the peace. Yet she needed something that morning, anything. “God,” she said, “I know I ha
ven’t spoken with you since I was a little kid, and I may not be one of your favorite children, but today I’m asking your help. Can you see fit to bring this child into the world? If not, I promise I will understand. Thank you.”
She arrived at the center, having dressed that morning in one of her crispest, well-tailored designer outfits, having also put on her favorite perfume. A sense of peace enveloped her as she lowered herself down into the same seat where she’d writhed in agony the day before. One by one, the doctors arrived, and took their places in the stations around the table. Dr. Allende paused to look up into the observational window and wave to Suella, smiling broadly.
One by one all the microscopes turned on and the four doctors locked their attentions on the tiny slide below them. Suella saw lasers fire and small white patches of light ignite. When they started to work, they stayed mostly silent. Instead, their hand signals and their body language seemed more purposeful, and on-task. Suella saw a bright light white glow from them. When she looked closer, she realized that the center of the white light lie in the small dish they focused on.
She could hardly breathe. Rather than sit back demurely in her seat, she leaned forward, urging them on. Gradually she lowered herself down, peering at them, until she’d put both hands on the glass, pressing her face against it. The white lights and the lasers continued to fire. The doctors looked at one another. One of them raised a fist triumphantly. The rest looked through their scopes and Dr. Allende clapped her hands silently, while the other two doctors high-fived each other.
Suella wanted to jump up and scream. She forced herself to stay low, keeping her giddy excitement inside. Jumping up and down and whooping might destroy the cell. Dr. Allende moved away from the table and left the room, confusing her. Moments later, she heard a knock on the door. When she opened it, she saw the doctor beaming, having taken off both her cap and her face mask. She put a finger to her lips to motion for her to shush. After all that, all she said was “You need to call Toni. Now.”
As she made her way to the lounge, she hit Toni’s number on the phone. After she reached her and the two women giggled like excited teenagers, Dr. Allende appeared in the lounge, looking much more serious than before. “What’s wrong?” Suella asked, having freshly terminated her call with Toni.
“Oh, nothing. The cells took and we’ll have a viable embryo in about two hours. You’ve contacted the birth mother, right?”
“Yes.”
The doctor exhaled. “I just want you to know that we’re only one quarter of the way there. We now have to implant the embryo. Then your birth mother will carry it to term. As I’m sure you know, there could be problems anywhere along the way.”
“Yes, I understand.”