The Clone's Mother
Read The Clone's Mother Online
Authors: Cheri Gillard
The Clone’s Mother
Cheri Gillard
The Clone’s Mother
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright 2015 Cheri Gillard
Cover Design by Cheri Gillard
Ebook Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please delete it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Other fiction by Cheri Gillard
From the Nephilim Redemption Series
CHLOE’S GUARDIAN
CHLOE’S WATCHER
Contents
IN MEMORY
For two dear friends, taken too early by that enemy cancer.
For Kathy Jarvi, my L&D mentor and friend, who taught me how to take care of new moms and deliver their babies when the doctors didn’t make it to the hospital in time. I loved all the laughter we shared, and you made bearable the Minnesota weather, mosquitoes (that special repellant recipe), and all those other things I told you about.
For Karen Parker, we spent a great many Chicago nights together in the NICU, and then when I moved, exchanged many hand-written old-fashioned letters, sharing book titles and art projects, and telling of our latest creative endeavors. I was just about done and wanted to show you, but I finished too late. I miss you.
“[Dolly’s death] provides further evidence of the dangers inherent in reproductive cloning and the irresponsibility of anybody who is trying to extend such work to humans.” —
Professor Richard Gardner, Chair of the Royal Society Working Group on Stem Cells and Cloning
“The world has to come to grips that cloning technology is almost here.”
—Dr. Panos Zavos, Reproductive Specialist; Founder ZDL, Inc.
“We have no reason to think that human cloning will not work—but it may take many, many attempts.” —
Professor Wolf Reik, Fellow of the Royal Society; Head, Laboratory of Developmental Genetics and Imprinting
“Human cloning is coming.” —
Mike Pence, Governor of Indiana
The Clone’s Mother
Eighteen Months Ago
The two children couldn’t have known their twilight game of hide-and-seek would end in disaster. They kicked up snow with their fur-lined boots, skipping in bliss beneath the darkening canopy of frosted spruce trees. They thought it was an ordinary evening at the cabin. Their giggles mixed with the streams of white breath puffing from their mouths.
The boy, an eight-year-old with thick, dark curls bouncing along the edge of his gray wool cap, gripped the mittened hand of his younger sister. She had the same dark hair, but with curls more relaxed that flowed down her back from beneath her crocheted pink hat, the same color as her cold-nipped nose. They both had the same violet eyes—quick, bright, and unforgettable. The pair was inseparable.
When they noticed their mother’s parked SUV in front of the log cabin, the boy pointed to it and the girl knew what he meant. It would be a great hiding place for their game with the kids from the other cabins.
The boy opened the door. The interior light switched on, projecting a blue patch of light onto the snow where they stood.
“Shh,” he said with a finger to his lips.
She nodded.
He signaled for her to climb in, then followed after her and pulled the door closed. They crawled to the back and arranged a red plaid blanket over their heads and hunkered down to wait for the other children to find them.
The cabin screen opened and the cold, stiff spring screeched. A woman sprinted toward the SUV as the pine door slapped back into its frame with a sharp clap.
The door shot open again, this time the stretching spring muffled by the barking voice of a man.
“Jackie! Come back here,” he yelled, lurching with a limp toward her. “You will do as I say.”
She groped to get the car door open before he reached her.
“Where do you think you’re going? Get out of there!” He floundered around the hood, closing the gap between them.
She jumped in, then slammed and locked the door.
“Jackie!” He reached and rattled the door handle. “Get out of there. Right now. Get out.” He pounded the window, making her flinch every time he hit the glass.
She flicked her black tangled hair off her bruising eye, trying to see through the tears and the swelling to find the key in her purse. She fumbled around, digging through the jumble of things inside. She needed to slow down but she was too panicked. She threw her wallet on the other seat, then her glasses, her checkbook.
He stumbled back into the cabin. The crack of the screen door was enough to fracture the house.
She dumped the purse upside down. It wasn’t there!
He burst back outside holding his own key to her 4Runner, jabbing the button, unlocking it as he ran toward her door.
She remembered. It was in her sweater pocket. She yanked it out and jammed it into the ignition.
Just when he grabbed the handle, her SUV roared to life and jumped out of his grasp, spraying damp soil and chunks of snow from beneath the tires. The heavy smell of wet earth, mixed with the exhaust, burned his nostrils as he watched her race away down the rutted path, tearing past the towering tree trunks toward the main road.
“Jackie,” he roared at the shrinking tailgate of her 4Runner. Then he lurched to his own car at the side of the cabin. He scrambled in, slammed his Navigator into gear, and took off after her.
As she sailed down the mountain road, she stole a glance in her rear view mirror. There he was, just as she knew he’d be. His angry headlights glared back at her in the reflection. His bumper roared up to hover mere inches from hers.
With fists clamped white around the wheel, she steered her speeding car around the winding road. He kept his gigantic SUV right on her, blaring his horn in cruel condemnation.
Oh, she would make him pay. He would be forever sorry for hurting her the way he had. He’d hurt her too many times.
When the tight curves in the narrow pavement straightened, the Navigator whipped over the double yellow and soared down the hill alongside her. Just as his car inched forward and came neck and neck with her 4Runner, oncoming headlights flashed into blinding high beams. The driver laid on the horn. Her husband hit his brakes and swerved back behind her on the two-lane mountain highway.
The oncoming pickup truck flashed by, its horn still blaring. Once the road cleared, her husband surged out again and sped down the straightaway. He finally cleared her car and swerved back into their lane in front of her. He sped down the hill, increasing the distance between them. Then his brake lights flamed. He skidded to a halt, fishtailing sideways through the grit on the road.
The monstrous vehicle sprawled over both lanes directly in front of her. She jerked the wheel as far to the right as she could and smashed the brake into the floorboard. Her car screeched in front of the Navigator, skidding so close it blew the dirt off the Navigator’s paint. The tires screamed across the asphalt. Burnt rubber scorched the air.
She missed the Navigator.
She hit the guardrail dead on.
April
After seeing them thousands of times, I’ve just figured out that all those busy, random wispy pink and blue lines on the vinyl wallpaper are storks. They’re in flight with cloth slings in their beaks, delivering little bundles of joy. I guess this is the first time I’ve actually looked at them. Lying here in this hospital bed has given me the time. Always before, I dashed in and out of these rooms so often, I never bothered about the wallpaper. That’s when I was working. Kate Johnston, R.N., caregiver, helper, healer.
But now I’m on the other end of the stethoscope.
I’m not sure if I’ll be back to work once this is over. It might be too hard. I don’t know—can’t know yet—how this is going to play out.
It all began last summer. That’s when things started to change. I had no idea the life I’d grown accustomed to would disappear. Forever.
We were suffering a string of sweltering July days, the kind Chicago was so good at tormenting us with, when you had to shower twice a day, pant through a wet wall of humidity to breathe, and cling to the hope that the sun would eventually quit its relentless incineration of the city and give it a rest for a few almost-tolerable nighttime hours.
I’d spent the day sweating on my top sheet instead of sleeping. When I finally gave up and left for my seven o’clock twelve-hour night shift at Florence Nightingale Memorial Hospital—we call it Flo Memorial—the mercury still tickled the tops of thermometers everywhere. The artificial arctic air in the hospital that hit me when I walked in felt better than a frosted, dripping can of Coke rolled over my sweaty forehead.
I was working the graveyard shift, assigned to cover for our vacationing charge nurse. After I got Report from the day shift charge nurse, I hunkered down behind the front desk to figure out what to do with the two extra nurses scheduled for the night. I didn’t need them. The day had been crazy, but right before I came on, all the moms had delivered and moved to Postpartum. Now I had too many nurses and I needed to send them home or find another department in the hospital that wanted them.
Just as I finished my phone call with Postpartum—who only wanted one of my nurses—I looked up and who should stroll in but Sheila Langley, late as usual.
I put down the receiver and swiped a loose strand of hair behind my ear, preparing to deal with Sheila—something I relished about as much as a pelvic exam. She leaned across the elevated reception counter and grabbed the back side of the Formica with her glistening scarlet claws. She pulled herself over on her stomach and looked down at the assignment sheet in front of me, revealing much more cleavage than I’d ever want to see. Yowza. She’d gone from 34B-minus to Sofia Vergara overnight.
“Who’ve I got?” she said with no explanation about her tardiness. Her hair—luminous platinum, though in reality she had the same brown as I did—was teased, sprayed, and coifed to perfection. Big, like the 80s were back in style.
“Hey, sorry. We don’t need you,” I said. I hooked back the hair that wouldn’t stay behind my ear, hoping I could pull off the façade of self-assurance. “The floor just cleared and Days didn’t have time to call anyone off. You get the night off.” Phew, my voice didn’t crack.
“I’m staying, Kate.” She spat my name like my cat with a hairball. “You go home. I just drove all the way here. I’m not leaving.” Flo Memorial was on the West Side. She lived somewhere north near Winnetka.
“Sheila, to tell you the truth, even if we had patients for you, I couldn’t let you work, not unless you cut your nails and took off that polish. Sorry. Hospital policy.” Ooh, that sounded impressive. Pulled that right out like I was regular management or something.
Guess she wasn’t fooled. Geez, the string of profanity she fired at me—I needed to wash my ears out with soap.
“I know you’re upset, but you need to keep your voice down. There are still some patients on the floor,” I said.
Was that flame coming out of her nose?
“Didn’t you see the new memo?” I tried. “With the JCAH inspection just around the corner, House Supervisor is going to be looking for violations and coming down hard. We can’t make exceptions.” Especially for overdone aging bleached Barbie dolls full of silicone.
A few more choice words erupted from her mouth, then she blasted through the doors and off the unit.
Yowza. I think my split-ends were smoking.
I tried to recover over the next many minutes. The shaking didn’t stop until I wrapped myself in a heated blanket from the warmer. Everyone was kind enough to avert their eyes, leave me alone behind the desk, and pretend Sheila hadn’t scorched me to a black, smoldering pile of bones.
***
When the shift was nearly over and everyone had disappeared into the patient rooms—and I’d mostly recovered from Sheila’s searing—an ER volunteer rolled in with a new admit. Her name was Nikki. She had almost as many piercings as I have freckles.
She looked familiar. It took a couple of seconds to figure out where I’d seen her before.
Then I remembered. The bus stop near my apartment complex. She’d always been at a distance, but the spiked aqua hair wasn’t something I could misplace very easily. There weren’t oodles of people with hair that color.
Nikki was only in the very early stages of labor, but her membranes had ruptured, so that bought her a one-way ticket into the hospital until her baby was born. Since it was so close to the end of the shift, instead of assigning her to a staff nurse, I just admitted her myself. I really enjoyed new moms. My job gave me the chance to feel needed. When I was alone with my patients, I had a sense of security and confidence I couldn’t muster elsewhere.
Before I finished showing her around the room, explaining the call light and where to put her belongings, a long-limbed, skin-and-bones, acne-plagued guy swaggered in. His pimply face was ashen gray under all the angry red zits. His hair was jet black, as was his torn shirt, his sagging pants, his boots, his fingernails, the circles under his eyes. He looked like a leftover from the old Goth scene. And he didn’t look healthy. Or clean. He must have only been seventeen, but he looked worn out and used up.
While the father-to-be poked around the room, I filled out the admitting paperwork, asking Nikki questions as I moved down the forms. She answered with few words. Her voice had sharp edges. The boyfriend started opening cupboards and snooping through drawers, messing with the bed controls and then the TV remote. Even though Nikki snapped at him to turn the TV off, he just grunted and cranked it louder. He kept interrupting my questions to make comments to Nikki about the cartoons he’d found to watch.
And to think he can procreate at his own discretion.
While he fiddled, I tried to focus on Nikki and get her paperwork in order. Besides being pregnant, she had lots of medical ailments—all which kept her on several medications.
She used my pen to write down on a scratch pad all the drugs, dosages, and times she took them. She even included some street drugs.
“Did your doctor have you stay on these meds your whole pregnancy?” I asked while glancing at what she’d written. It was an elaborate schedule, including drugs I’d never used in OB.
“I didn’t have a regular doctor. I went to one jerk once, but I never went back. He was a real douchebag.”
“So…who prescribed your meds?”
“Got ’em at the clinic. They didn’t ask if I was pregnant.” My eyebrows must have furrowed because she said, “Don’t worry. I didn’t take them every day. I have a system.”
I could see that from the routine she’d mapped out on the paper. I labeled the top of the page then stuck it in my scrub pocket so I could copy them into her chart.
In spite of the bed lifting and lowering several times at her boyfriend’s whim, and the TV blaring while he giggled at
Fanboy & Chum Chum
, I got her checked in and settled. I finished charting just in time to return to the main desk for Report. Once I clocked out, all I wanted was to go home and hit my own bed. I was shot.
But I’d made a doctor’s appointment. You know, that beloved
Annual
. Every woman’s favorite day of the year.
I’d made the appointment for that morning with some doctor on my new insurance plan. Once I forked over the check for my co-pay, answered a bazillion questions, and turned and coughed a few times, they would declare me disease-free and I could go on my way with both my mind and bank account eased of their burdens.
After a short bus ride east and a two-block hustle on foot going south, I arrived at the doctor’s office with two minutes to spare. The day was already too hot and I was perspiring after my rush to arrive on time. But once I got there, I languished way too long in the humming waiting room. I thought I’d get right in since I had the first appointment of the day. But I guess it was the same morning everyone else and her sister wanted the first appointment. I was nodding off when a nurse in Bugs Bunny scrubs finally escorted me to a stuffy exam room. She took my vitals, asked a bunch of health questions, then told me to take everything off and put on a stiff paper origami gown.
Très chic
. Move over, Ralph Lauren. I don’t know how long I waited because I fell asleep on the narrow table. I snored away till some guy shook me out of my coma.
I jerked awake, then stared at him like an otoscope had grown where his nose should’ve been. It took a second to remember where I was. Once it all came back to me, I snapped my knees together and clutched what I could of my paper garments over my dignity.
I couldn’t figure out why this man-doctor with a pudgy face and lima bean eyes stood over me. My appointment was with a woman. I never saw man-doctors. The scheduling secretary had made some kind of terrible mistake.
“Where’s my doctor?”
No way was this my doctor.
“At your service,” he said, oozing with confidence. He told me his name but I was too busy arranging my paper clothes around me to listen.
I lifted my head and raised up onto my elbows. “No. Wait.”
“I’m sorry you had to wait. I’m running a little behind.”
His nurse stepped into the room, but stood impatiently by the door like she had better things to do.
“Lie back down and scoot to the end of the table,” he said as he patted the butcher paper that covered the exam table, making it crackle. “Let’s not get any later.”
He wasn’t giving me a chance to say I’d prefer a female doctor, even if I’d mustered the courage to talk back. Just assumed I’d do what he said.
I hesitated, not sure what to do. I wish my vertebrae didn’t turn to mashed potatoes when men bossed me around.
He sat back on his rolling stool and folded his hands in his lap. His glare said he wasn’t happy with my behavior. His nurse folded her arms and leaned against the door with an eye roll.
I did not like this place. And I sure as heck did not like him. Not one bit. I should have high-tailed it out of there. Without bothering to change out of my origami-wear. You just can’t know when a simple act is about to change your life forever. But his look of censure echoed something from my past. I had to do what he said.
He stopped staring me down and lurched from his chair. “Scoot to the end of the table,” he said as he clunked the stirrups out from the sides of the exam table. His voice had lost all patience. “Jen, go tell my next patient I’ll be there as soon as I can.” His eye-rolling nurse, Jen, left.
I scooted, while trying to hold the paper around me. He snapped on his gloves. Reluctantly, I placed my heels in the footrests and lay my head back down.
He examined me, pushing and poking, peeking and prodding. I tried to keep my breathing steady, to not let his touch freak me out. He said I should have a Pap smear. While he used a wooden spatula to scrape the roof of my mouth from between my legs, he asked some routine questions, like when my last period was, if I took vitamins, if there was any cancer in my family.
Then he said, “What kind of birth control are you using?”
Birth control? The only protection I used was sunscreen. What girl needed birth control when all she’d kissed in years was George Clooney? His photo. In
People
magazine.
But I wasn’t telling this strange man-doctor
that
.
So I lied.
“Oh, um, my boyfriend. He takes care of things. You know.”
He said
hmm
, then grunted, “Huh,” then invaded my personal space in some more ways, ways I don’t want to think about, and finally had me sit up. He told me he felt something on my ovary, maybe a cyst.
“It might just be normal ovulation,” he said, “but I want to examine it more thoroughly with an ultrasound.”
“Do you think it’s serious?”
“Nothing to waste worry on.”
“Won’t an ultrasound be expensive?”
“You shouldn’t let money determine your prescribed medical treatment. You wouldn’t want to let something go that needs attention.”
But you just said not to worry about it.
While I tried to process what his words meant, Jen came back in and he told her to give me an ovulation kit. He said to call the day it tested positive. That would be the best time to check the cyst.