The Panic Zone (12 page)

Big Cloud, Wyoming

S
everal days after her breakdown at the county sheriff's office, Emma sat in Wally Bishop's office at Silver Range Insurance downtown.

“Thanks to your uncle's help, we've expedited the claims. Never saw anything move so fast.” Bishop made little Xs on the documents he'd slid toward Emma, then passed her a monogrammed fountain pen. “I need you to sign here and here.”

But Emma was looking at the great gray owl mounted on Bishop's wall and thinking back to last year when she sat here with Joe, updating their policies. All the way home, he'd gone on about how much he liked that owl because neither one of them wanted to hear another word about death benefits.

We've got a lot of living ahead of us, Em. But if I go first you can stuff me like that owl.

“Emma?”

Uncle Ned pulled her attention back to the business before her: paperwork for a check for $225,000 for Joe's life insurance, and one for $25,000 for Tyler.

Emma gripped the pen, took a deep breath, held it and signed for the larger check. When she poised it over the signature line for Tyler's, she froze.

“Is there a problem?” Bishop asked.

“I can't sign for Tyler.”

Because I don't believe he's dead.

Bishop's focus shifted to her aunt and uncle, then back to Emma.

“Emma,” Aunt Marsha said. “We know it's hard but you have to sign.”

“The second one can wait,” Uncle Ned said. “We'll deposit the bigger check today and deal with the second claim later, okay, Wally?”

“Of course, I understand,” Bishop nodded. “This is never easy.”

* * *

On the drive to the bank, Emma said nothing.

She had spent the past few days battling the grief, fear and rage that swirled around her. She was nearing an abyss, slipping closer toward its yawning black jaws.

Was she losing her mind?

“Emma? Are you expecting a delivery?”

Delivery?

Aunt Marsha's question had startled her.

They had left the bank but every aspect of their time there—sitting in the manager's office, accepting condolences, dealing with the large check—had not registered with Emma. She had been submerged in her thoughts of Tyler. Now, she recognized that they had returned to her house, and her aunt and uncle were curious about a van that had arrived at the same time.

“Looks like a courier,” Uncle Ned said.

After parking, he went to the driver's door and signed for receipt of an envelope then passed it to Emma. She opened it to find a large, plain, sealed brown envelope marked “Confidential to Emma Lane.”

She opened it and withdrew a white business letter and immediately recognized the sender's letterhead.

“What is it, Emma?” Aunt Marsha asked.

“It's from my doctor.”

“The one who treated you at the hospital?”

“No, I'll open it inside.”

The letter was from Dr. Glen Durbin, her obstetrician and gynecologist.

Sitting on her living room sofa, she read,

Emma's hand flew to her mouth and her body sagged.

“What is it, dear?”

Aunt Marsha put her arm around Emma who passed the letter to her. After reading it, Marsha passed it to Ned, who looked up from the page.

“Tyler's not your biological child?” he asked.

Several moments passed before Emma could answer.

“I'm his biological mother. Tyler was conceived by an anonymous sperm donor from the clinic in California that we used.”

“I never knew this. Marsha, did you know?”

“No one knew that Joe was infertile,” Emma said. “It was something he'd agonized over. After we considered our options he agreed to an anonymous donor, provided we kept it secret.”

“It must've been difficult,” Aunt Marsha said.

“It was extremely hard. Joe's a proud man—
was a proud man
—oh, God,” Emma gasped. “He did this for me, he ached to have a family but this threw him. He put my happiness before his own. He was so good.”

* * *

Emma spent the remainder of the day resting.

She had no appetite for dinner, retreating, as she'd done since the funerals, to Tyler's room, rocking and thinking.

Dr. Durbin's letter had pulled her back.

Back to the troubling time when they'd learned the reason she'd failed to get pregnant was because Joe had poor sperm motility. For Emma, the prospect of being childless was the worst thing she'd faced since her parents' deaths.

“Actually, the chances of Joe fathering a child are about two, maybe three in ten, but you have options,” Durbin explained to them.

After months of anguished consideration, Emma opted to have a child by using an anonymous sperm donor through a private clinic.

To her, a normal pregnancy, over adoption, was the best way to go.

But Joe was reluctant to do anything.

“I wanted you to have my baby, not a baby from another man.”

“This will be our baby, Joe. A man needs to do much more than contribute DNA and genetics to be a real father.”

“I just feel that I somehow failed you.”

“No, this is where we work together to beat this and have a baby,
our
baby. Please say you'll do it for me, for us, Joe.”

As he searched her face, his eyes brightened and he smiled.

“All right, if it's what you want, I'll do it.”

Dr. Durbin had given them a list of clinics and they picked Golden Dawn Fertility Corp. After some initial telephone consultations and paperwork, they flew to Los Angeles to start the process.

Golden Dawn was a first-class operation located in a gleaming downtown L.A. office building where they treated Emma and Joe with the utmost care.

They first learned how the clinic screened donors.

All candidates were between the ages of twenty-one and forty and came from top universities or top professions. Their health had to be excellent. Their medical and genetic histories were scrutinized. Their blood and sperm samples were subjected to exhaustive testing to ensure they were free of disease, or of any risk due to lifestyle.

They were genetically profiled, their DNA collected. Doctors and psychologists interviewed them for personality traits and their family's genetic history.

The clinic introduced them to the donor catalogue, which offered general information, such as race, eye and hair color, weight, height, blood type, education.

Joe and Emma were not allowed to see a photograph, or know the names of the donors. However, they provided pictures of Joe and worked with clinic staff to narrow their choices to a donor that not only met their spectrum of choices, but ultimately resembled Joe as much as possible.

“Judging from that catalogue, I think we'll have a kid who's going to be a heck of a lot smarter than me,” Joe joked with Emma as they walked on the beach to watch the sun set on the Pacific before heading home.

The whole process cost them about four thousand dollars.

The clinic worked with Dr. Durbin back in Wyoming to time the insemination procedure. When it was right, the vials from donor #181975 were shipped overnight from California to Durbin's office, where the doctor inseminated Emma.

“Now, Emma, I want you to consider this medical suggestion,” Durbin said privately to her afterward. “You and Joe should make love tonight as many times as you can. Enjoy yourselves because you never know, this could be that one-in-ten time that Joe's sperm has a successful mission. It just might increase your chances of pregnancy.”

“You read my mind, Doctor.” Emma laughed.

When she returned for her next scheduled appointment her heart swelled.

“Congratulations, you're pregnant,” Durbin said.

That night, Joe took Emma out to dinner at the Diamond Restaurant. Nine months later Tyler was born and their world had changed.

When she held him, she wept.

When Joe held him, Emma filled with joy because Joe was enraptured.

“Hey, Dad,” she said. “He looks like you.”

“Maybe,” Joe beamed. “But he's got his mama's eyes.”

Emma never believed she could be so happy and so in love.

She was living her dream, right up until the instant Joe swerved to miss an oncoming car.

Why? Why did this happen?

Now, as she rocked, she hugged Tyler's stuffed bear.

Someone had rescued Tyler from the fire. It happened. Didn't it?

Or was she losing her mind?

The police insisted she was wrong, the insurance company with its check told her she was wrong. Now Dr. Durbin with his letter told her she was wrong to think her baby had survived.

Another nail of reality had pierced her heart.

Emma cried out and her aunt came to help her to her bed.

“It's very late, sweetheart, you need to get some sleep.”

Emma cooperated as she ached for rest. She undressed and got into her bed, letting sleep take her because when she slept, she could dream.

And when she dreamed she was with Joe and Tyler again.

In her dreams they were driving together near the snow-tipped Rockies, heading for the picnic north of town. There was no crash. They made it safely to their destination alongside the Grizzly Tooth River, the water sparkling like a rush of diamonds.

Joe is crawling after Tyler who is toddling toward her, running into Mommy's open arms in the beautiful sunlight and they are so happy, so happy the air rings…and rings…until the mountains vanish…then Joe vanishes…and Tyler disappears into the dark void of night that is ringing
…like the telephone at Emma's bedside.

“What…”

Emma sat up and answered the phone, her head spinning.

“Emma Lane?”

She didn't recognize the female voice.

“Yes.”

“Emma Lane in Big Cloud, Wyoming?”

The voice was ragged, raw with an underlying current of stress.

“Yes, who is this?”

“Listen to me. Your baby is not dead.”

“What? Who is this? What did you say?”

“Your baby is alive. That's all I can tell you. I'm sorry.”

“Wait!”

The line went dead leaving Emma to scream into the handset.

Kunming, China

L
ong before the sun rose Li Chen woke in the shack where she lived with her husband and son.

She began her day by lighting the stove.

Under the dying moon she stepped from her house that was shimmed tight against others in the village. She walked down the worn path to the water pipe where she washed, then brought water home for tea.

Her husband, Sha Shang, stirred, grunted a greeting then left to wash. After Li made their lunches, she made tea and breakfast: congee, which Li prepared in the rice cooker. While Sha joined the other men for their morning smoke, Li looked upon her three-year-old son, Pan Qin, asleep on his cot. Under the lamplight she drank in his flawless face and skin. One little foot stuck out from his blanket. Li traced the tiny birthmark on his ankle, shaped like two hearts touching.

It symbolized her eternal bond to her son.

Pan was her reason for living and dreaming.

Li and Sha were young peasants from the country when they married and migrated to the city two years ago. A cousin with city smarts got them this shack, while Li and Sha hoped that one day they would qualify for a modern apartment downtown with a private toilet, running water, bedrooms and a separate kitchen.

This was their dream.

When breakfast was ready, she teased Pan's hair until he woke. He kissed his mother, then, droopy-eyed, went outside to pee. His father smiled and called him a good soldier.

Dawn was breaking when they finished breakfast.

Sha kissed Li and Pan, climbed onto his bicycle and rode off to his job at a brick factory across the city. After Li tidied up, she and Pan set out for her job in the market. They had a long walk out of the village, which was in Kunming's Xishan District.

The sun peeked over the horizon, illuminating the smoggy haze that blanketed the metropolis, as the crammed bus took Li and Pan to Kunming's bird and flower market.

They walked by streets of old two-story shops with tiled rooftops, then to the market with its exotic smells like roasted chestnuts, fried duck heads, kebabs and other barbequed meats.

There were stalls with water tanks where live eels threaded amongst each other. The eels fascinated Pan as did the vendors selling parrots, turtles and large insects.

There were artists selling paintings, carvings, crafts, clothing, fabrics and jewelry. Farmers were selling corn, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, bananas, lemons and pungent goat cheese.

Li operated a small stall, selling spices.

Pan usually stayed with her all day.

While the market was popular, it was also a center for criminals, drug dealers, gangsters and child stealers. Like other working-class parents in the market, Li knew that the child traffickers kidnapped boys to sell to wealthy childless people who wanted to carry on the family line at any cost.

Li always kept a close eye on her son. She never let her guard down with him in the market. If Li had to step away, she entrusted Pan to a friend in a neighboring stall.

Lately, she'd grown increasingly comfortable with the young man and woman who'd appeared a few months back
to conduct research on children in the market. At first Li was uneasy as she was not yet a legal migrant. But the researchers didn't care about her status. Their concern was collecting data on her son for a special government hygiene study.

The man and woman visited Li's stall every week and gave Pan a medical examination, swabbing his mouth, pricking his finger for a blood sample, making notes, taking his picture. They'd asked Li about his diet, bloodline, allergies, and similar matters.

Li was happy that Pan was getting personal medical care and was growing friendly with her regular visitors, even coming to depend on them. There were times when she left Pan with them while she stepped away from her stall for a brief errand.

The market was busy all morning. She'd wanted to buy Sha a present. His birthday was coming and there was a carving of a tiger that would be perfect for him. Li knew the artist and he'd offered her a good price.

By afternoon, the market crowds had increased.

Li was relieved when the medical researchers arrived.

“Good afternoon, Li. May we please examine Pan today?”

Li invited them into her stall.

“Would you watch Pan and mind the stall for me, while I run a quick errand?” Li asked them.

“Certainly.” The young woman smiled. “We'll be right here.”

Li kissed Pan, who gave her a wide grin because he knew that whenever his mother left, she returned with sweets. She moved through the market crowds to the vendor with the tiger and was disappointed. The artist who'd promised her a special price on the tiger was not there. A grumpy old man who wanted triple the cost was tending to the stall. Li bartered with him before the old crook relented.

Happy, she started back, stopping to get sweets for Pan.

As she neared her stall, alarm pinged in her stomach.

It was empty.

She went inside and looked around, puzzled and afraid.

What was going on?

She asked her neighboring vendors, who shrugged.

“It's been so busy, Li. We've seen nothing.”

No sign of her son. No sign of the researchers.

“Pan!”

Her mouth went dry, fear slid down her throat and devoured her hope that he would appear.

“Pan Qin!”

Li left her stall, scanning the area, searching the faces of small children, running through the crowds screaming for her son. Her mind swirled. She didn't even have the names of the researchers, no cards, no documentation.

Nothing.

“Pan!”

The minutes bled into a half hour, which became an hour. Time swept by without a trace of her boy. The other vendors passed on the word, some sent people to Li's stall to help search the market.

The whole time Li accused herself.

Why weren't you watching your child?

Why did you trust him to strangers?

How could you be so stupid?

Two police officers came by and Li pleaded to them, told them about the medical researchers, the government's hygiene study.

“We know nothing of any study,” one officer said, while his partner relayed details on the radio.

“There is no such study in the market,” he said.

Li screamed.

This was a nightmare. She had to wake up. Yes. Sha would be waking her any moment now and she would tell him of her bad dream and she would go to Pan's cot and hold him so tight and cry tears of joy.

As the sun sank and the market crowds thinned, Li re
mained in her stall praying for Pan's return. Word got back to the village and Sha was alerted. He raced to the stall, his face a mask of disbelief.

Li collapsed in his arms.

“Kill me! Kill me for what I've done. I've lost our son!”

Sha only held her and stared at the empty market as a misting rain descended on them.

All night long, Li and Sha walked the abandoned streets, their voices echoing as they called out Pan's name. They never stopped because they could not bear to go home, could not bear to face his empty cot and the devastating truth.

Their little boy had been stolen.