Robin Cook - Shock

The conversation with Mrs. Webster was almost identical to the one with Mrs. Sard except for Mrs. Webster's breathlessness. She explained she'd had to run for the phone since she'd just taken Stuart out of the bath. Most important, she welcomed the women to stop by and gave explicit directions.

"At least the baby will be clean," Joanna said as she put away her cell phone.

A half hour later the women pulled into the driveway of a home that was the antithesis of the Sards'. The Websters' was a comparative mansion in brick colonial style with massive chimneys sprouting up like weeds in a garden. The women eyed the house and the carefully tended grounds. A rash of blooming magnolias and dogwoods graced the lawn.

"I'll have to say that Dr. Saunders is eclectic about his choice of stepparents," Deborah commented. "That is, if this child is another clone."

"Come on!" Joanna said. "Let's get this over with." The women proceeded up the flagstone walkway with reservation. Neither was entirely sure they wanted to go through with the visit, yet both felt compelled. Joanna pushed the doorbell.

Once again both Joanna and Deborah knew instantly that the child was a clone of Paul Saunders. The baby looked identical to the Sards' child with the same white forelock, the same hetero-chromic irises, and the same broad-based nose.

Mrs. Webster was as gracious as Mrs. Sard without Mrs. Sard's apparent starvation for company. She invited the women into her home, but the women declined and insisted on remaining on the front stoop.

Since Joanna had had time to adjust emotionally from the initial shock, she was able to participate more in the brief conversation with Mrs. Webster than she had with Mrs. Sard. Also, confronting a clean child in an environment more auspicious for the baby's well-being made the episode more tolerable. Out of curiosity, Joanna asked if the baby had any hearing problem. She was told that he did, and it sounded equivalent to the Sard baby's problem.

After leaving the Webster house the women were silent, each absorbed in their own troubled thoughts. It wasn't until they got onto Route 2 and got up to highway speed that Deborah spoke up: "I don't mean to beat this issue to death, but you can see now why I was disappointed we couldn't get into the Wingate research files. My intuition tells me they're doing something really wrong out there and this cloning we've stumbled on is just the tip of the iceberg. With the kind of arrogance Dr. Saunders undoubtedly has, the sky's the limit."

"Cloning humans is bad enough."

"I don't think it's bad enough to get Saunders et al. closed down," Deborah said. "In fact, if it gets out in the media that they're offering cloning, there might be a stampede of infertile couples to their doorstep."

"What can I say?" Joanna muttered. "As I told you, I did the best I could in that server room."

"I'm not blaming you."

"Yes, you are]"

"All right, maybe a little. It's just so frustrating."

They lapsed into silence again. The engine droned. In the distance the Boston skyline appeared along the horizon.

"Wait a second!" Deborah blurted suddenly, causing Joanna to start. "The shock of discovering the cloning has made us forget about the eggs!"

"What are you talking about?" Joanna questioned.

"The number of eggs they supposedly got from you," Deborah said. "How could they get hundreds unless…" Deborah paused and stared out through the windshield with a horrified expression.

"Unless what?" Joanna demanded. Under the circumstances she found it more irritating than usual that Deborah was up to her old tricks.

"Look in the donor file," Deborah said quickly, "and see if there are any more donors who have supposedly given hundreds of eggs."

Muttering under her breath, Joanna reached into the backseat and with a grunt brought the heavy file onto her lap. She started at the beginning and didn't have to go through many pages. "There are plenty. And here's one that's even more impressive. Anna Alvarez is down for having given four thousand two hundred and five!"

"You have to be joking!"

"I'm not," Joanna said. "Here's another multi-thousand donor: Marta Arriga. And yet another: Maria Artiavia."

"They sound like Hispanic names."

"They certainly do," Joanna agreed. "Here's another, even more astounding. Mercedes Avila reputedly donated eight thousand seven hundred twenty-one!"

"Look and see if it suggests that all those eggs were individually implanted like with your eggs."

Joanna turned to the next page of Mercedes Avila's file and ran her finger down the column. "It seems to be the case."

"Then they probably were all destined to be nuclear transfer clones,' Deborah said. "Are they all followed by Paul Saunders's name?"

"Most of them,' Joanna said. "Although there are some with Sheila Donaldson's name as well."

"I should have guessed," Deborah said. "It means they're working together. But, tell me! When you leaf through the names, do there seem to be quite a few Hispanic names in general or was it just a fluke with the As?"

Joanna did as Deborah suggested. It took her several minutes. "Yes; there seem to be quite a few, and all of them are listed for having donated thousands of eggs."

"I wonder if that's the Nicaraguan connection?" Deborah questioned with a shudder.

"How so?"

"Female embryos have the maximum number of eggs in their ovaries for an individual's entire life," Deborah explained. "Someplace I read that at a particular point in embryonic development, the female embryo has close to seven or eight million, whereas when it is born it's down to a million, and by puberty down to three or four hundred thousand. Some distorted souls like Paul Saunders and Sheila Donaldson might think of the female embryo as a virtual gold mine."

"I don't think I like what you are suggesting," Joanna said.

"I don't either," Deborah said. "But unfortunately it stands to reason. These Nicaraguan women could be allowing themselves to be implanted and then subjected to abortions at twenty weeks just to get the eggs."

Joanna averted her eyes and stared out the side window as she shuddered through a wave of revulsion. What Deborah was saying was as horrific as the cloning, with its implications about the role of a woman and the lack of sanctity of human life. With difficulty she suppressed a caldron of emotion that threatened to bubble to the surface. She found herself wishing she'd never had anything to do with the Wingate Clinic. Having been involved as a donor made her feel like an accomplice.

"The problem with that scenario, if it is going on, is that it's legal. It might be a PR disaster to be happening at an infertility clinic, but it would be hard for anybody to do anything about it as long as the women were not being coerced."

"Paying them is a type of coercion!" Joanna snapped. "These women are poor and come from a struggling Third World country!"

"Hey, calm down! We're trying to have a discussion here."

"I'm not going to calm down!" Joanna spat. "And what was that thought of yours that you didn't finish about my eggs? I hate it when you leave me hanging like that."

"Oh, yeah, sorry," Deborah said. "The Nicaraguan connection got me sidetracked. The only way I can imagine they got that many eggs from you is if they took your whole ovary."

Joanna swayed as if Deborah had slapped her. She had to shake her head to refocus her mind. With a tremulous voice Joanna asked Deborah to repeat herself in case Joanna had misunderstood.

Deborah took her eyes off the road to cast a quick glance at her roommate. She could hear from Joanna's voice that she was momentarily on thin emotional ice. "I'm just thinking out loud here," Deborah explained. "Don't get yourself in a dither."

"I deserve the right to get upset if you're suggesting they took my ovary," Joanna said, slowly and seemingly in perfect control.