Greg Bear - Darwin's Radio

Maria Konig had referred them to Dr. Felicity Galbreath after Kaye met resistance from several pediatricians reluctant to take on a SHEVA pregnancy. Her own health insurance had canceled her; SHEVA was covered as a disease, a prior condition, certainly not as a natural pregnancy.

Dr. Galbreath worked at several hospitals but kept her offices at Marine Pacific, the big brown Depression-era Art Deco hospital that looked down across the freeway, Lake Union, and much of west Seattle. She also taught two days a week at Western Washington University, and Kaye wondered where she found time to have any other life.

Galbreath, tall and plump, with round shoulders, a pleasantly unchallenging face, and a tight, short head of mousy blond hair, came into Kaye’s shared room twenty minutes after she was admitted. Kaye had been cleaned up and briefly examined by the resident nurse and an attending physician. A nurse midwife Kaye had never met before also checked on her, having heard about Kaye’s case from a brief article in the Seattle Weekly.

Kaye sat up in her bed, her back aching, but otherwise comfortable, and drank a glass of orange juice.

“Well, it’s happened,” Galbreath said.

“It’s happened,” Kaye echoed dully.

“They tell me you’re doing fine.”

“I feel better now.”

“Very sorry not to be here sooner. I was over at UW Medical Center.”

“I think it was over before I was admitted,” Kaye said.

“How do you feel?”

“Lousy. Healthy enough, just lousy.”

“Where’sMitch?”

“I told him to bring me the baby. The fetus.”

Galbreath glared at her with mixed irritation and wonder. “Aren’t you taking this scientist bit too far?”

“Bullshit,” Kaye said fiercely.

“You could be in emotional shock.”

“Double bullshit. They took it away without telling me. I need to see it. I need to know what happened.”

“It’s a first-stage rejection. We know what they look like,” Galbreath said softly, checking Kaye’s pulse and looking at the attached monitor. As a precaution, she was on saline drip.

Mitch returned with a small steel pan covered with a cloth. “They were sending it down to…” He looked up, his face pale as a sheet. “I don’t know where. I had to do some yelling.”

Galbreath looked at them both with an expression of forceful self-control. “It’s just tissue, Kaye. The hospital has to send them to an approved Taskforce autopsy center. It’s the law.”

“She’s my daughter” Kaye said, tears trickling down her cheeks. “I want to see her before they take her.” The sobs began and she could not control them. The nurse looked in, saw Galbreath was with them, stood in the doorway with a helpless and concerned expression.

Galbreath took the pan from Mitch, who was happy to be relieved of it. She waited until Kaye was quiet.

“Please,” Kaye said. Galbreath placed the pan gently on her lap.

The nurse left and shut the door behind her.

Mitch turned away as she pulled back the cloth.

Lying on a bed of crushed ice, in a small plastic bag with a Ziploc top, no larger than a small lab mouse, lay the interim daughter. Her daughter. Kaye had been nurturing and carrying and protecting this for over ninety days.

For a moment, she felt distinctly uneasy. She reached down with a finger to trace the outline in the bag, the short and curled spine beyond the edge of the torn and tiny amnion. She stroked the comparatively large and almost faceless head, finding small slits for eyes, a wrinkled and rabbitlike mouth kept tightly closed, buttons where arms and legs might be. The small purple placenta lay beneath the amnion.

“Thank you,” Kaye said to the fetus.

She covered the tray. Galbreath tried to remove it, but Kaye gripped her hand. “Leave her with me for a few minutes,” she said. “I want to make sure she isn’t lonely. Wherever she’s going.”

Galbreath joined Mitch in the waiting room. He sat with his head in his hands in a pale bleached-oak armchair beneath a pastel seascape framed in ash.

“You look like you need a drink,” she said.

“Is Kaye still asleep?” Mitch said. “I want to be with her.”

Galbreath nodded. “You can go in any time. I examined her. Do you want the details?”

“Please,” Mitch said, rubbing his face. “I didn’t know I’d react that way. I’m sorry.”

“No need. She’s a bold woman who thinks she knows what she wants. Well, she’s still pregnant. The secondary mucus plug seems to be in position. There was no trauma, no bleeding; the separation was textbook, if anybody has bothered to write a textbook about this sort of thing. The hospital did a quick biopsy. It’s definitely a first-stage SHEVA rejection. Chromosome number is confirmed.”

“Fifty-two?” Mitch asked.

Galbreath nodded. “Like all the others. It should be forty-six. Gross chromosomal abnormalities.”

“It’s a different kind of normal,” Mitch said.

Galbreath sat beside him and crossed her legs. “Let’s hope. We’ll do more tests in a few months.”

“I don’t know how a woman feels after something like this,” he said slowly, folding and unfolding his hands. “What do I say to her?”

“Let her sleep. When she wakes up, tell her that you love her, and that she’s brave and magnificent. This part will probably feel like a bad dream.”

Mitch stared at her. “What do I tell her if the next one doesn’t work, either?”

Galbreath leaned her head to one side and smoothed her cheek with one finger. “I don’t know, Mr. Rafelson.”

Mitch filled out the discharge papers and looked over the attached medical report, signed by Galbreath. Kaye folded a nightgown and put it into the small overnight case, then walked stiffly into the bathroom and packed up her toothbrush. “I ache all over,” she said, her voice hollow through the open door.

“I can get a wheelchair,” Mitch said. He was almost out the door before Kaye left the bathroom and put a hand on his shoulder.

“I can walk. This part is done with, and that makes me feel much better. But…Fifty-two chromosomes, Mitch. I wish I knew what that meant.”

“There’s still time,” Mitch said quietly.

Kaye’s first impulse was to give him a stern look, but his expression told her that would not be fair, that he was as vulnerable as she. “No,” she said, simply and gently.

Galbreath knocked on the door frame.

“Come in,” Kaye said. She closed and latched the lid on the overnight case. The doctor entered with a young, ill-at-ease man dressed in a gray suit.

“Kaye, this is Ed Gianelli. He’s the Emergency Action legal representative for Marine Pacific.”

“Ms. Lang, Mr. Rafelson. I’m sorry for the difficulty. I have to obtain some personal information and a signature, under the state of Washington compliance agreements with the federal Emergency Act, as agreed to by the state legislature on July 22 of this year, and signed by the governor on July 26. I apologize for the inconvenience during a painful time—”

“What is it?” Mitch asked. “What do we have to do?”

“All women carrying SHEVA second-stage fetuses should register with the state Emergency Action Office and agree to follow-up medical tracking. You can arrange to have those visits with Dr. Galbreath, as the obstetrician of record, and she will carry out the standardized tests.”

“We won’t register,” Mitch said. “Are you ready to go?” he asked Kaye, putting his arm around her.

Gianelli shifted his stance. “I won’t go into the reasons, Mr. Rafelson, but registration and follow-up are mandated by the King County Board of Health, in agreement with state and federal law.”