Robin Cook - Shock

While Mare was on her errand, Deborah pulled out her cell phone and turned it on. She saw she had a message, but rather than listen to it, she dialed Joanna's number. Joanna picked up right away.

"Did you call?" Deborah asked.

"I did, but the message was just to call me."

"How's it going?"

"Boring but tolerable," Joanna said. "The first thing that I did was try to access the donor files, but no go."

"That's not surprising."

"The plan is, I'll be taking a half-hour break at eleven. Can you meet me?"

"Where?"

"Let's say that water fountain in the main hall near the door to the server room."

"I'll be there," Deborah said. She ended the call and slipped the phone back into her shoulder bag. While she'd been talking she'd looked around the lab. There were only five other people visible in a work space that could have supported fifty. It was obvious the Wingate anticipated growing exponentially.

Mare returned carrying a covered petri dish that contained a small amount of fluid. To the naked eye the fluid was clear and uniform but in actuality it was layered. On top was a film of mineral oil and beneath was an aliquot of culture fluid containing sixty or so female eggs.

Mare sat on one side of the double-headed microscope and motioned for Deborah to take the stool on the other side. She turned on the source light and the ultraviolet light. Then both women leaned forward to peer through the eyepieces.

For the next hour Deborah was treated to a hands-on demonstration of nuclear transfer using micropipettes. The first part involved removing the nuclei from the eggs. The second part involved putting much smaller, adult cells just under the eggs' outer covering. The process involved a certain amount of finesse but Deborah caught on quickly and by the end of the hour was doing it almost as well as Mare.

"That finishes that batch," Mare said. She leaned back from the scope and stretched her tight shoulder muscles. "I have to say, you've caught onto this more quickly than I expected."

"Thanks to an excellent instructor," Deborah said. She stretched as well. The delicate operating of the micro-pipettes required such strict control that all muscles were kept tense.

"I'll get you another petri dish that's been set up when I take this group we've done to the fusion people," Mare said. "I don't see any reason you can't be on your own already. Usually it takes a day or two, but you're already doing it like a pro."

"I think you are being overly generous," Deborah said. "But tell me! What kind of eggs are we working with here? Are they bovine or swine?" Deborah had seen a few female gametes of different species either in photomicrographs or in actuality in the lab at Harvard. She knew they looked strikingly similar except for size, which could vary considerably. From the size of the eggs she was working with she guessed they were swine since it was her impression that bovine eggs were larger, but it was truly a guess.

"Neither," Mare said. "These are all human eggs."

Although Mare had answered Deborah's question matter-of-factly, the information hit Deborah like a sledgehammer. In the entire hour she'd been working with the cells, the idea that she was working with human eggs had never even occurred to her. It made her tremble to think about it, especially since she'd been paid forty-five thousand dollars for one egg!

"Are you sure these are human eggs?" Deborah managed.

"I'm pretty sure," Mare said. "At least that is my understanding."

"But what are we doing here?" Deborah stammered. "Whose eggs are these?"

"That's not for us to question," Mare said. "This is one busy infertility clinic. We're helping to get the clients pregnant." She shrugged. "They're clients' eggs and clients' cells."

"But by doing nuclear transfer, we are cloning," Deborah said. "If these are human cells, we're cloning human beings!"

"Technically, perhaps," Mare said. "But it's part of the embryonic stem-cell protocol. In private clinics like the Wingate, we're allowed to do stem-cell research on extra material not used for the infertility treatment and otherwise destined to be destroyed. We're not getting any government funding, so anybody who is against this kind of work doesn't have to feel they are paying for it through their taxes. And remember: These are extra gametes, and the clients who've produced these gametes have agreed for them to be used. And most importantly, the fused cells are not allowed to become actual embryos. The stem cells are harvested in the blastocyst stage before any cellular differentiation."

"I see," Deborah said with a nod, but she wasn't sure she did. It was a situation she was not prepared for, and she was troubled.

"Hey, calm down!" Mare urged. "This is no big deal. We've been doing this for several years. It's okay! Trust me!"

Deborah nodded again, although she wasn't sure how she felt about all this.

"You're not one of those religious nuts, are you?" Mare asked. She leaned forward to look Deborah in the eye.

Deborah shook her head. At least she was certain of that.

"Thank goodness," Mare said. "Because this stem-cell research is the future of medicine. But I'm confident I don't have to tell you that." She slid off her stool. "Let me go get some more eggs," she added. "If you'd like we can talk more about it when 1 get back."

"Fine," Deborah said, thankful for a moment to think. With her elbows on the lab bench, Deborah cradled her head. Keeping her eyes closed, she tried to imagine how the Wingate Clinic could produce so many extra eggs. She estimated that she and Mare had already gone through four or five dozen, and the morning was young. Knowing what she did about ovarian hyperstimulation, ending up with that many eggs for research was extraordinary. Usually only ten or so eggs resulted from a stimulated cycle and most of those were used for in-vitro fertilization.

"Ah, Miss Marks," a voice said. Simultaneously there was a tap on Deborah's shoulder. She looked up, and although she was sitting, she found herself eye to eye with Dr. Paul Saunders. "I'm glad to see you, and you look as lovely as you did yesterday."

Deborah managed a smile.

"How are you finding the lab work?"

"Interesting," Deborah said.

"I understand Miss Jefferson has been showing you the ropes," Paul said. "She's certainly one of our best technicians, so you are in almost as good hands had I had the opportunity to come over first -Jung this morning as I had originally planned."

Deborah nodded. Such conceit reminded her of Spencer, and she found herself wondering if it were a universal character trait of infertility specialists.

I suppose," Paul continued, "I don't have to explain to you how important this work is to our clients and the future of medicine in general."

"Miss Jefferson told me the eggs on which we'd done nuclear transfer were human eggs," Deborah said. "Needless to say I was shocked, knowing how scarce human eggs are."

“Did she say she was certain?" Paul asked. His pale face darkened.

"I think her words were pretty sure," Deborah said.

"They are swine eggs!" Paul said. Absently he ran his fingers through his hair. "We're doing a lot of work with pigs lately. Do you know what the major thrust of our research is these days?"

"Miss Jefferson mentioned stem cells," Deborah said.

"That's part of it," Paul agreed. "Very definitely an important part, but not necessarily the most important. Right now my major focus involves how the oocyte cytoplasm reprograms an adult cell nucleus. That's the basis for current animal cloning techniques. You know, the way Dolly the sheep had been cloned."

"I'm aware of Dolly," Deborah said. She leaned back. As Paul spoke, his ardor magnified as evidenced by a suffusion of color in his otherwise pale cheeks. Progressively, he thrust his face toward Deborah so that she could feel the wind as he pronounced hard consonants.