Chapter Nine
Sunlight finally cracked through the window. Suellla heard muffled conversation and footsteps outside the door. She hoped someone would let her see her baby. Trying not to disturb Toni or Nathan, who were still fast asleep, Suella washed herself down with wipe sponges and put on some clothes. She sneaked out into the hallway and walked down to the examination room where they had taken her baby the night before. It was dark and empty. What had they done?
She searched for someone, anyone. A nurse crept up behind her and touched her on the shoulder, making her jump. “You must be wondering where your baby went, right?” she said. “Follow me.”
Together they turned down another hallway, the nurse leading her to the end.
They turned right into a large, bright room with lots of windows. It was the place where babies go just after they are born, when girls are wrapped in pink blankets and boys in blue. Rows of plexiglass lined baby basinets lie before them, and Suella found her baby near the middle, identified with a pink blanket and a notecard which read “Baby Girl Worthy” at the top of it.
“Have you thought about a name, yet?” the nurse asked.
Yes, Suella thought, she had thought at dozens of them, yet they’d failed to agree on a single one of them. She listed the names in her head: Mercedes, Catherine, Julia, Felicia and Corrine. A startling thought suddenly occurred to her. Why not feminize her husband’s name? Natalie. It was also the name of an old-time movie star who had died suddenly and tragically. She asked the nurse “Is it okay if I step over there and cuddle her?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” she replied, shooing her in the direction of the baby’s basinet.
Suella walked over to the clear plastic container holding her baby daughter, looked down at the little angel before her and said “Hello Natalie. I’m mama.”
Later, Suella was pleased to learn that after meeting with a couple of the doctors from the center, she would be free to bring little Natalie home. They made it sound like a “Suggestions for care” session, the way all hospitals did when discharging a patient, but instead, Suella and Nathan met the doctors in their gleaming polished wood offices, where they presented her with a whole ream of forms to sign. “I don’t know about this,” Nathan said, backing away from the table. “Our lawyers should be here. Honey, why don’t you call one of them?”
“It’s too early Nathan,” Suella said.
The doctors looked at each other and then at Nathan. “You can take as long as you need to read all the text. There’s nothing on there you’ll find odious.”
Nathan pointed a finger at the two of them, something Suella knew that he only did when he was very angry. “Listen, I’ve paid you guys here a lot of money. We’re not going any further with this until my lawyer is present.”
The doctor with the pen set it down and leaned back in his chair. Nathan reached for his phone and furiously dialed the lawyer’s office. The lawyer was in court, though.
He excused himself to go into another room and call around to see who he could find. At times Suella could hear him shout even though the door was closed. Soon he emerged from the other room, looking weary but satisfied. “They’re sending someone from one of the other offices to look things over,” he said.
A half-hour a tall, red-haired man named Fisk, showed up to check the documents the doctors had been foisting on Nathan and Suella. With the doctor’s permission, he perused them for an hour while everyone waited outside.
Once Suella and Nathan met with Fisk in one of the gleaming doctor’s offices, Nathan asked “So what’s the word?”
Fisk shrugged. “Mostly, that if Natalie develops any debilitating illnesses, that you won’t hold the center liable.”
Nathan said “Well, they don’t make you sign all this shit when you leave a regular hospital.”
Fisk said “Two things. One, this is not a regular hospital, and two, Natalie is not a regular baby. Statistically speaking, cloned children are more prone to health problems and shortened life spans than natural babies. These men just want to make sure you won’t hold them financially responsible.”
Nathan nodded. “Don’t you think it’s funny that practically everyone is scared to death of you guys? What else?”
“They want to swear you to secrecy. They want you to think of Natalie in terms of a naturally born child.”
Nathan and Suella looked at each other. “Well, that doesn’t sound too difficult,” Suella said. “Natalie is my child. Natalie is me. She’s our child.” She patted Nathan’s hand.
Fisk paused for a moment before continuing. “There’s something else. They want you to bring Natalie back to the center every year for testing.”
Nathan nodded. “On their dime, I hope?”
Fisk said “Yes.”
Suella brightened at that prospect. “It’d be like getting free medical care.”
With that settled, Nathan took to signing the forms. “Geez, this is like all the little kids dangling programs over the bullpen wall.”
Suella just wanted to hold Natalie again. She didn’t care what she had to sign.
When they all drove home, they argued over who would go in what car. “I want to be with my baby,” Suella said. She intended to hold her for the whole drive back to Santa Monica.
Nathan looked at Toni, and then at Suella. “How are you going to do that unless either I or Toni drive one of the cars?”
Suella said “God, no.” Toni still sat in the wheelchair they’d provided once they scanned for discharge.
Nathan smirked, with a serious look in his eyes and continued speaking. “The way I see it, either I drive Toni and the baby home or you drive Toni and the baby home.”
“I’ll drive Toni and the baby home,” she said. That way, she’d at least get to be in the same car.
On the way home, through the desert and the freeway, Toni fell asleep while holding Natalie. Suella tried to keep an eye on both of them as she drove along. Soon enough, she reached Toni’s condo, made sure that Toni made it inside okay, and then headed for her home. The moment had finally arrived, when she would spend her first few moments alone with her new daughter, Natalie. Nathan took a while to get back, himself, which gave her extra time with her. She sat with her in the nursery. Over the previous five months, she had been putting together a nursery in one of the empty rooms inside their house. She’d placed a soft easy chair in the nursery because she knew she would spend many hours holding her little girl, cooing to her.
Suella held Natalie close to her, letting the baby’s scent drift up and soothe her. “We’re going to have such a great life,” she said, taking a moment to gaze at her sleeping child, rocking her back and forth gently. That first day, she fell asleep holding Natalie. Still sitting in the easy chair. Nathan gently kissed her to wake her up.
He waited until she opened her eyes to speak. “Darling, don’t you think you’d be more comfortable in a bed and she’d be better off in the crib?”
Suella placed Natalie in the crib, but she went back to the easy chair, setting it even lower so she could resume sleeping.
Nathan had missed two games in attending the birth and sorting through the legal paperwork. He had to go back to San Diego and would stay at the condo down there. They hired a nanny, a matronly Mexican woman named Marie. Just after they first met, Marie looked Suella up and down in an appraising way. “You sure bounced back quickly! “ she said. “You must be in really good shape.”
For a moment, she struggled over whether to admit to her that another woman had carried the baby. But then the nurse would ask questions. Was it an arranged adoption or IVF? Suella was already weary of answering questions, so she simply smiled and said “Thank you.”
By mid-summer, when she had mastered feeding and caring for little Natalie, she decided to take her to San Diego for a baseball game. She longed to have been able to breast feed her daughter a
nd was dismayed when she found out she could not. During the drive down, after securing the car seat about twenty times, she thought about how lucky it had been that Nathan had been traded. There would be a whole new group of wives in the San Diego luxury box, none of whom would know her history. As far as they would be concerned, Natalie would be her baby. Natalie was her.
She could have used a variety of different high-tech gadgets to carry her baby around. Natalie was still too small and vulnerable for a stroller, however.
In the end she settled for a low-tech sling to help her hold Natalie as she brought her through the stadium gates and up the ramps. Predictably, all of the wives in the luxury box cooed and fussed over Natalie. They peppered her with all the usual questions, and Suella was ready for all of them: “Is she your first?” “Did you go natural?” and “Does she sleep through the night?” Suella replied yes to the first, yes to the second, and yes to the third, and she told herself she was not lying. Yes, Natalie was her first child. Yes, she was born naturally (after all, nobody had flat out asked her if she was the one carrying her). Finally, yes, Natalie slept through the night.
For the first half of the game, Natalie was passed to one set of gushing, cooing female arms to another. Most of the women were in their twenties or early thirties. Suella was astounded over how they were acting. Most of them had had children, hadn’t they? When Suella received Natalie back in her arms, she took her down to the enclosed stadium seats section, a place where she had never sat at the Cincinnati stadium. Rosalyn Fernandez, a button-cute pitcher’s wife followed her down and sat beside her.
Mostly, Suella wanted to get to a place where she could take a long look at her daughter. Rosalyn watched her doing this and said “She’s beautiful.” Suella held her sideways so that she could look down and see her face. Natalie possessed the delicate, soft skin that all babies have and her little head was covered with tufts of golden blond hair. Her eyes were blue, as were all babies’, yet hers were so blue that the whites had been tinged blue as well. Most of all, Suella adored the little girl’s tiny mouth with cupid bow lips. Did Suella look like this as an infant? Her mother would know for sure, but of course she could not bring Natalie to meet her mother. Not yet, anyway.
That day, she could sit back and enjoy a beautiful day of watching her husband work. Most of her clients knew about the new baby. Suella still did business with them, just not every day. Everyone seemed to understand. An infant child needs her mother.
At one point during the excitement of people coming and going and the wait staff slinging trays around, little Natalie coughed twice, a big, whelping cough. How could her little lungs force out such a sound? A nagging doubt crept into her mind: cloned children faced extraordinary health issues. There was no question. She resolved to watch her daughter’s health like a hawk and pounce at the first sign of any trouble. In the meantime, she tried to enjoy the rest of the day, one that saw Nathan come in to pitch, facing only two batters.