"What do you expect?" asked the lovely woman across from her. Adrianne Dyer possessed the kind of body that filled her tight uniform in ways that caught the eye of nearly every male patient, orderly, intern, resident, and doctor. It was not her fault, and she permitted no entanglements to mar her professional conduct. Fletcher liked the taciturn young woman and sought to trans-fer her to the Reproductive Endocrinology section. Right now they drank coffee in the cafeteria and discussed the scotched project.
"Hospitals will always be conservative," Nurse Dyer said. "They have lots of money to think about."
"Yes." Fletcher nodded. "Why risk it on saving a few lives?" Dyer shrugged, tossing her head in a way that sent a cas-cade of reddish-auburn hair whipping over her shoulder. "So work without their approval and give them a fait accompli." Fletcher grinned. "That'd sear their stethoscopes." Her good humor faded almost instantly. "I've been doing theoretical work and instrument design, but if I so much as thought about try-ing, I'd lose my privileges so fast my head wouldn't have time to spin."
"Reword it and resubmit it to a different committee." Dyer took a long draught of coffee while she watched Fletcher through deep hazel eyes. "It's worth the struggle." She fin-ished off the cup. "I'd like to help."
"Thanks. You know about me. What brought you to the point of wanting to help a mad doctor?" Dyer shrugged again. "You don't need to suffer a personal crisis to determine what's right and wrong. What you said makes sense. If you have a certain perspective."
Fletcher thought quietly for a long while. Dyer said nothing more, allowing the silence to continue. That afternoon, Fletcher forced through the nurse's trans-fer to RE. For the next six years they worked together, hypoth-esized, tinkered, researched, and conspired together. Though they rarely met outside the hospital, they spent countless days in Fletcher's office in after-hours' discussions. They imagined every possible ramification of surgical embryo transfer. It was Adrianne who coined the term transoption. Evelyn considered the word transortion for "transfer birth" as an alternative to abortion, "bad birth."
"Doesn't roll off the tongue well," Dyer said. "You shouldn't make it sound anything like abortion, anyway. Raises too many images." She thought for a moment. "Make it sound more like adoption. Doesn't something like transoption sound cheerier?"
Dr. Fletcher admitted that it did. "The transfer option. Transoption." She felt as if they had created something en-tirely new, exciting, and shatteringly important just by utter-ing a word. They were trailblazers on a new path for medi-cine, a new, wider road for human rights. The future lay daz-zlingly bright ahead. "
Now all that might collapse into lawsuits, prison, or worse.
Evelyn struggled to find a way to tell Valerie Dalton that she had a daughter. She ran through possible conversational sce-narios in the theater of her mind. None of them turned out well. Why, she finally wondered, after lying all this time, should I suddenly tell the truth?
She thought out the details, then telephoned.
"Hello?" said the voice on the other end.
"Hello, this is Dr. Evelyn Fletcher at-"
"Oh, hi! You have reached Ron and Valerie's place," said the recording. "We're not in right now, or maybe we are and are listening to see if we want to talk to you."
"Christ," muttered Fletcher.
"But if you wait for the tone and leave your name, phone number, the day and time you called, a brief message, and three character references, we'll consult our attorneys and astrologers and get back to you. But don't get your hopes up. Thank you for sharing."
Fletcher used the time to light up a Defiant, take a few puffs, and frown. If she disliked anything, it was flippant-and lengthy-telephone answering messages.
The phone beeped. "This is Dr. Evelyn Fletcher of Bayside University Medical Center. I'd like to speak with Valerie Dalt-"
There was a clattering noise on the line, followed by a woman's voice. "Hello?"
"Valerie Dalton?"
"Yes."
"Dr. Fletcher. You were in to see me last March."
"Yes, Doctor. I remember. How could I forget?" Her voice was hesitant, curious at a doctor's call at such a late hour.
"I know I'm calling a little late, but we have a minor crisis here that I hope you can help us with."
"What do you mean?"
Evelyn took a deep drag, letting the smoke escape with her words. "We've gone over the records of our blood tests, and yours turned up as having the right combination of factors that could help us save a very sick baby here. What we'd like is for you to come in tomorrow morning for a more thorough screen-ing with an eye toward a transfusion."
"Oh, I don't really have the time to come-"
"Miss Dalton, I don't normally call complete strangers ask-ing for blood. This really is a matter of life or death."
Evelyn only heard telephone static for long seconds.
"What about the baby's mother and father?" Valerie asked.
"The father's unavailable, and the mother's blood type is incompatible. And there are no siblings or other close rela-tives. We exhausted those avenues before we searched the computer files for a close HLA match."
"I really don't know," Valerie said. "I've never given blood before. With all this talk about AIDS and all, I-"
"You can't get anything from giving blood." Fletcher paused, her mind racing through logical arguments until she hit upon one. "Valerie-have you had any feelings of guilt about termi-nating your pregnancy?"
After a moment of quiet, the voice on the other end said, "Yes."
"You might be able to assuage some of those feelings by giv-ing the gift of life to another child." Silence crisscrossed the wires for long moments. Evelyn knew that if she said nothing more, Valerie would have to make the next move to break the awkward hiatus.
After a pause that almost seemed itself to be a battle, Valerie's soft voice said, "All right. What should I do?"
"
Mark Landry gazed at the blonde entering the lab and thought, What a babe! Wearing a maroon cashmere sweater dress and matching high heels, she looked to be in her mid-twenties. That was all right. He liked older women. His fin-gers tapped at the counter.
Valerie approached the skinny laboratory technologist-he was the only one in the lab whose life at the moment appeared to be untainted by physical labor. She handed him a slip of paper.
"Here for a blood test and a pint, eh? Sit up here, Ms. Dalton. This won't take long." She sat on the cot. There were three other people in the room, all hooked up to blood bags. She found it remarkably difficult to look at the people or the apparatus. She kept her eyes focused on the young man.
He was a lanky, freckled surf blond possessing an eager, admiring wolf gaze. She was flattered, but since she was in a situation that involved pain and bleeding, she wished for the entire episode to conclude swiftly.
He recorded her blood pressure, taking longer than normal to fit the cuff on her smooth, tanned arm. He gazed at her eyes-grey in the fluorescent light of the lab-while attempt-ing to make conversation.
"My name's Mark." He glanced at the paperwork. "Uh, is this for donation or autologous storage?"
"Autologous storage?"
"You know-setting blood aside before an operation so you only get your own. Safer, these days."
"No, it's for a baby here. It's-"
"Oh, right," he said, removing the pressure cuff and substi-tuting a stretch of elastic. "Directed donation for the Chandler girl. Her mother was in the center's fertility program. Just born three days ago and already in trouble." He donned a double pair of clear plastic gloves. "I'm going to take a drop of blood from your ear lobe."