At long last, Dr. Fletcher said, "There. Transoption complete. Looks good inside." She let go a tense, deep breath. "I took a snip of chorionic villi for genetic testing. That way we can skip the risk of an amniocentesis. We're going to keep you here a few days for observation just to make sure the little one in there is settling in and on the job."
Karen groaned as the tube slid out of her. She raised her head to look at the doctor. "I'm pregnant?"
"That's what you paid for."
She lay back to stare at the bright and silly paper sun over-head. Tears brimmed her eyes. "Thank you, Doctor, thank you. I don't know how I can ever pay you enough for-"
"Just make sure you take every precaution with this preg-nancy. I've done all that I can surgically. The rest is up to you and that baby." The doctor remembered something. "Oh-will you want to know what sex it is?"
"No. David and I want to be surprised." She murmured a few more thank yous amid her assurances that she would fol-low every guideline. Then she allowed Nurse Dyer to unstrap her from the stirrups and help her onto a gurney.
As she wheeled the patient out, Dyer turned to look inquir-ingly at the doctor. She tilted her head slightly toward the medical equipment.
Dr. Fletcher shook her head imperceptibly. "You take the CV sample to the lab. I'll clean up." The gurney wheeled out of the room. The doors slammed shut with a muted thunk. Dr. Fletcher, alone in the silence of the empty operating room, locked the doors, took several deep breaths, and leaned against a counter. After a moment, she stepped over to the surgical machinery, switched everything off, and pressed a button near the monitor. A videocassette popped out into her waiting hand. She took a case from one of the drawers, slipped the cassette in, and wrote a few notes on the outside. Then she quietly set to the task of cleaning the device.
Cleanup was usually a job left for nurses or surgical techni-cians. Dr. Fletcher, though, guarded her new machine jeal-ously. No one else besides Nurse Dyer even knew about this night's operation. What was known throughout the hospital was that Dr. Fletcher considered the Reproductive Endocri-nology department to be her own private stomping ground. Her success with the fertility clinic gave her the freedom to call the shots.
Even so, she had to be cautious this time. Trust no one. Do all the dirty work. Leave everything spotless. She had finally crossed the line.
She quietly emptied the holding tank into a container marked with the curving red biohazard trefoil. Out poured a transpar-ent, thickish carnelian liquid. Here and there, suspended in the mixture, floated little deep-red clumps of tissue and clot-ted blood. She washed out the container with powerful detergents, rinsed it with methanol, and placed it in the autoclave for sterilization. The hysteroscope and microsurgical gear re-ceived meticulous cleaning, followed by treatment in a steril-izing bath-they were too delicate for the autoclave.
The customized tubing, probes, and suction hoses were all disposable. She placed them in a receptacle after making note of the specific design she had created on the spot. Each pa-tient would require unique combinations of hardware-notes now could save her time in the future. A future she saw as bold, bright, and terrifying.
The cleanup took twice as long as the operation.
When everything had been returned to orderly cleanliness, Dr. Fletcher glanced at her watch. Nine forty-five.
She could be in bed by ten-thirty if she hurried.
"
Even in sleep, Evelyn could not escape the consequences of her decision. A dream grabbed her and would not let go. In it she lay-once again nineteen-upon a stiff white table, feel-ing a young life drain out of her. She was alone, all alone. Not even the abortionist was present. The room became a vast plain that she raced over, flying in her blood-drenched hospital gown. Covered with the sectioned remains of the dead, the plain stretched for unthinkable miles in all directions.
Suddenly, she stood upon a glacier. Trapped within the ice lay hundreds of frozen sacs. Inside the sacs rested tiny, indis-tinct embryos. Evelyn experienced their patient expectation, longing to help them find a way out of their frozen limbo. Their whispered cries grew audible, distinct.
"You've opened the Door," they said with that portentous significance found only in dreams. "You can free us now."
"Free us now."
"Neither you nor anyone can close the Door," they mur-mured.
"Can't close the Door."
She realized that she was chanting with them in a mystical rite. White-robed surgeons, arms dipped to the elbows in crim-son, chanted with her and the dead-before-life. Scarlet flames appeared on the blue ice.
"Bring us through the Door. Open for us the Gate of Life."
"The Gate of Life," she repeated.
The ice cracked like a thunderbolt.
Evelyn's entire body quaked. She lay in bed staring into dark-ness. The dim blue light from the alarm clock glowed in the corner of her field of vision. The sheets stuck to her, wet with perspiration. The Door in the dream, she realized, was a one-way exit from her life as a respected physician. She had crossed its threshold that evening and could never return.
VI
In the weeks after the operation, Valerie knew that her deci-sion had been the right one. She was back at work the follow-ing Monday. Ernie Sewell had told everyone that she had taken a couple of sick days for the flu, so she had no need to concoct a cover story. Most people avoided her the first few days back, carefully sympathizing at a distance.
At home, Ron seemed even more loving and tender. As soon as she was able, they took long walks around Lunada Bay, hand in hand, briskly or languidly. They spoke about their future, made plans, looked at larger, more expensive homes around where they strolled.
Her security in her new position grew with every day of ac-complishment. She found that she had an undiscovered talent for dealing with the many petty rivalries that surfaced in the office environment. At the end of the day, she and Ron would meet for dinner in Redondo Beach or at the little Italian res-taurant in Lunada Bay's small shopping center to share the day's adventures with each other. When it was finally safe to make love, they did so with an unbridled intensity that was just clearheaded enough for them to use at least three of the many precautions against preg-nancy. That summer, she took nine days of her vacation time right after the long Independence Day weekend and traveled with Ron through the Bahamas. They took their contraceptives with them. Over the months, though, she discovered that she would stare for an instant whenever she saw a pregnant woman, sizing her up, estimating her term. For a while this mystified her, until she realized that she was trying to envision how she would have looked had she not had the abortion. It troubled her to be in an island paradise such as Eleuthera watching pregnant young women, wondering if this one was six months along, that one seven, and was that one exactly six and a half?
In late September she began to wonder when she would have given birth. She estimated that it would have happened some time in mid-October. That's when she stopped looking at preg-nant women and started to observe women with babies.
She said nothing about this to Ron, but one day in October he caught her staring for longer than usual at a blond woman with a tiny red-haired baby in her arms. Its little face peered out over its mother's shoulder, watching the world with the stunned, unfocused expression of every recent immigrant.
"Sweetheart?" he said, reaching across the restaurant table to touch her hand.
"Hmm?" She looked back at him, realized why he seemed concerned, then blushed lightly.