Robin Cook - Seizure

With her fears at least partially substantiated, Stephanie shook her head in dismay at the utter immorality involved in aborting human fetuses for eggs. To her, it was worse than pushing ahead with reproductive cloning, which she also suspected was part of Paul Saunders’s game plan. Stephanie recognized it was maverick infertility organizations like the Wingate Clinic that had the power to cast a pall over biotechnology and its promise by engaging in such unconscionable activities. It also passed through her mind that Daniel’s ability to turn a blind eye to such a reality in this current instance said something about him that she would rather not have known, and that knowledge, combined with the emotional distance he was currently displaying, made her question the future of their relationship more than she’d ever done in the past. Impulsively, she decided as a bare minimum that when they got back to Cambridge she would move out on her own.

But there was a lot to be done until then. Stephanie checked her watch again. Eleven minutes had elapsed. She was running out of time, since she would have only four more minutes, at most, on her current visit. She needed to find a true smoking gun so Saunders couldn’t claim the abortions were therapeutic. Although she could theoretically return to the egg room another day, she intuitively knew it would be difficult, especially coming up with another credible excuse to be away from Daniel. He might not be emotionally supportive, but he was certainly staying close by physically.

Four minutes was not much time. Out of desperation, Stephanie elected to race the rest of the way down to the end of the room, go laterally, and then return to the open door along another of the numerous lengthwise aisles. But after she’d gone only twenty feet, she came to a sudden stop. On a glance to her left down one of the side aisles, she saw what appeared to be a laboratory or an office separated from the main room by floor-to-ceiling windows. It was about twenty feet away from where she was standing. Bright fluorescent light emanated from within and inundated the immediate area. Stephanie changed direction and hurried toward it.

As she approached, she saw that her initial impression had been correct. It was most likely Cindy’s office/lab positioned conveniently midway down the length of the egg room and tucked against the building’s foundation. The room had a shallow, rectangular shape no more than ten feet deep but some twenty-five to thirty feet long. Running along its back wall was a laminate countertop with drawers below. In the center was a kneehole to form a desk. At the extreme left was an in-counter sink with a typical laboratory faucet. Cabinets were above. The bright fluorescent light was coming from hidden, under-cabinet fixtures, which flooded the countertop with blue-white illumination.

The counter itself was cluttered with tissue-culture dishes, centrifuges, and all sorts of other laboratory paraphernalia, but none of it interested Stephanie. Her attention had been immediately drawn to what looked like a large, open ledger book positioned at the desk area. It was partially obscured by the high back of the office chair.

Knowing that time was slipping away relentlessly, Stephanie’s eyes darted up and down the length of the windowed office, searching for a door. To her surprise, it was right in front of her, and except for its recessed handle, it looked like the other glass panels. Its hinges were on the inside.

With a keyhole suggesting the door could be locked, Stephanie prayed it wasn’t. She lifted the door handle from its socket and gave it a twist. To her relief, it turned, and the door effortlessly opened inward. As she stepped into the long, narrow room, she could feel a breeze of the egg room air coming along with her, suggesting the egg room was slightly pressurized, probably to keep out airborne microbes. The interior of the narrow office was air-conditioned to a normal temperature and humidity. Letting go of the door and leaving it ajar, Stephanie moved over to the ledger and was immediately engrossed; she sensed that she had found what she was looking for.

She pushed the office chair aside to bend over for a closer look at the handwritten entries. It was indeed a ledger, but not for finance. Instead, it was a list of all the women who had been impregnated and aborted including the dates of both, along with other information. Flipping back a few pages, Stephanie could see that the program had begun well before the clinic had opened its doors. Paul Saunders had been planning his egg supply well in advance.

Stephanie picked out a few individual cases, and running her finger along individual entries, she learned that the women had been impregnated following in vitro fertilization. IVF made sense, since only female fetuses were wanted, and IVF would be the only way to guarantee such an outcome. She noticed the X chromosome sperm involved in the cases she was looking at were all from Paul Saunders, which testified to an abiding, conscienceless megalomania.

Stephanie was entirely captivated. Everything was duly recorded in a bold script. She could even tell what type of tissue culture was done from each case as well as the respective cultures’ current status in the egg room. While some fetuses contributed whole ovary preparations, others had their ovaries minced and cultured, and others were reduced to providing disaggregated germ cell lines.

Returning to the original page displayed when she had come into the room, Stephanie began counting how many women were currently pregnant. She couldn’t help but shake her head that Saunders and company not only had the temerity to carry out such a program but also the audacity to record all its sordid details in black and white. With such a discovery, all Stephanie would have to do was inform the Bahamian authorities of the ledger’s existence and leave it up to them to confiscate it.

Suddenly, Stephanie froze as a thunderbolt of fear descended her spine. She hadn’t quite finished counting the pregnant women when her heart leaped in her chest. With no sound or any warning whatsoever, a circle of cold steel had insinuated itself through her hair and pressed against the back of her perspiring neck. Instantly, she knew without a modicum of doubt that it was the barrel of a gun!

“Don’t move, and put your palms on the desk,” a disembodied voice threatened.

Stephanie felt her knees weaken. She was momentarily paralyzed. All the anxieties attendant to her snooping and aggravated by the press of time had coalesced in a maelstrom of sheer terror. She was bent at the waist over the ledger book, with one hand on the desk and the other poised in the air. She’d been using her index finger to help with the counting.

“Put your palms on the desk!” Kurt repeated with uncamouflaged anger. His voice quivered. He had to restrain himself from an urge to pistol-whip this shamefully provocative female who’d had the nerve to enter the egg room.

The gun barrel pressed in against Stephanie’s neck just short of pain. Finding the strength to move, she did as she was told and put her right palm on the countertop. Having both hands on the desk kept her from possibly collapsing. She was shaking from fright to the point that her leg muscles felt like jelly.

Thankfully, the barrel of the gun was withdrawn. Stephanie took a breath. Vaguely, she was aware of searching hands going into her jacket pockets. She felt her cell phone and the clutter of pencils and papers removed and then replaced. She was beginning to recover to a degree, when she felt hands come up under the lab coat and reach around to fondle her breasts.

“What the hell are you doing?” she managed to demand.

“Shut up!” Kurt snarled. His hands dropped down to pat along the sides of her thorax. Then they dropped further to her hips, where they momentarily stopped.