Her exclamation of disgust at my pun was no more than I'd expected. "And you have the gall to set yourself up against the best gynecologists of Harkness Pavilion?"
"It's not difficult to keep abreast of improved techniques in uterine surgery," I said calmly.
"Ha! Quack!"
I suppressed my own anger at her insult by observing that her anger brought out all the age-lines in her face despite her artful makeup.
"I checked with Harkness before I came here," she said, trying to overwhelm me with her research. "There are no new techniques which could correct a bicornuate womb!"
"So?"
"So, don't try to con me, you charlatan," and the elegant accent faltered into a flat midwestem twang. "My daughter can't carry to term. And you know it!"
"I'll remind you of that in another five months, Mrs. Baxter." I rose to indicate that the interview was at an end.
"Ach! You women's libbers are all alike! Setting yourselves up above the best men in the country on every count!"
Although I'm not an ardent feminist, such egregious remarks are likely to change my mind, particularly when thrown in without relevance and more for spite than for sense.
"I fail to see what Women's Liberation has to do with your daughter, who is so obviously anxious to fulfill woman's basic role."
The angry color now suffused Louise Baxter's well-preserved face down to the collar of her ultrasmart man-tailored suit. She rose majestically to her feet.
"I'll have you indicted for malpractice, you quack!" She had control of her voice again and deliberately packed all the psychotic venom she could into her threats. "I'll sue you within an inch of your life if Cecily's sanity is threatened by your callous stupidity."
At that point the door opened to admit Esther, my office nurse, in her most aggressive attitude.
"If Mrs. Baxter is quite finished. Doctor," she said, stressing the title just enough to irritate the woman further, "your next patient is waiting."
"Of all the-"
"This way, Mrs. Baxter," Esther said firmly as she shepherded the angry woman toward the door.
Mrs. Baxter stalked out, slamming the street door so hard I winced, waiting for the glass to come shattering down.
"How did that virago ever produce a sweet girl like Cecily?" I mused.
"I assume that Cecily was conceived in the normal manner," said Esther.
I sat down wearily. I'd been going since four-thirty A.M. and I didn't need a distasteful interview with Baxter's sort at five P.M. "And I assume that you heard everything on the intercom?"
"For some parts, I didn't need amplification," said my faithful office nurse at her drollest. "Since this affair started, I don't dare leave the intercom hook up. Someone's got to keep your best interests at heart."
I smiled at her ruefully. "It'll be worth it -"
"You keep telling yourself -"
"- to see that girl get a baby."
"Not to mention the kudos accruing to one Dr. Allison S. Craft, OB-GYN?"
I gave her a quelling look, which she blithely ignored. "Well," I said, somewhat deflated, "there must be something more to life than babies who insist on predawn entrances."
"Have a few yourself, then," Esther suggested with a snort, then flipped my coat off the hook and gestured for me to take off the office whites. "I'm closing up and I'm turning you out, Doctor."
I went.
I had a lonely restaurant supper, though Elsie, who ran the place, tried to cheer me up. Once I got home, I couldn't settle down. I wanted someone to talk to. All right, someone to gripe to. Sometimes, like now, I regretted my bachelor-girl status. Even if I had had a man in mind, I really couldn't see much family life, the kind I wanted to enjoy, until I had a large enough practice to bring in an associate. On a twenty-four-hour off-and-on schedule that such an arrangement provided, I could hardly see marriage. Not now. Especially not now.
I poured myself a drink for its medicinal value and sat on my back porch in the late spring twilight.
So - Louise Baxter would sue me if her daughter miscarried. I wondered if she'd sue me if her daughter didn't. I'd bet a thousand bucks, and my already jeopardized professional standing, that the impeccable, youthful-looking Louise Baxter was shriveling from the mere thought of being made a "grandmother." Maybe it would affect her business reputation - or crack the secret of her actual age. Could she be fighting retirement? I laughed to myself at the whimsy. Cecily Baxter Kellogg was twenty-seven, and no way was Louise Baxter in her sixties.
However, I had told Mrs. Baxter the truth, the exact truth: the pregnancy was well started, and the condition of the mother was excellent, and everything pointed to a full-term, living child.
But I hadn't told the whole truth, for Cecily Baxter Kellogg was not carrying her own child. Another medical "impossibility" trembled on the brink of the possible. A man may have no greater love than to lay down his life for a friend, but it's a far, far greater love that causes one woman to carry another's baby: a baby with whom she has nothing, absolutely nothing, in common, except nine months of intimacy. I amended that: this baby would have a relationship, for its proxy mother was its paternal aunt.
The memory of the extraordinary beginning of this great experiment was as vivid to me as the afternoon's interview with Mrs. Baxter. And far more heartwarming.
It was almost a year ago to this day that my appointment schedule had indicated a 2:30 patient named Miss Patricia Kellogg. Esther had underscored the "Miss" with red and also the abbreviation "p.n." for prenatal. I was known to be sympathetic to unwed mothers and had performed a great many abortions - legally, too.
There was nothing abashed about Patricia Kellogg as she walked confidently into my office, carrying a briefcase.
"I'd better explain. Dr. Craft, that I am not yet pregnant. I want to be."
"Then you need a premarital examination for conception?"
"I'm not contemplating marriage."
"That… ah… used to be the usual prelude to pregnancy."
She smiled and then casually said, "Actually, I wish to have my brother's child."
"That sort of thing is frowned on by the Bible, you know." I replied with, I thought, great equanimity. "Besides presenting rather drastic genetic risks. I'd suggest you consult a psychologist, not an obstetrician."
Again that smile, tinged with mischief now. "I wish to have the child of my brother and his wife!"
"Ah, that hasn't been done." She patted the briefcase. "On a human,"
"Oh, I assume you've read up on those experiments with sheep and cows. They're all very well, Miss Kellogg, but obstetrically it's not the same thing. The difficulties involved…"
"As nearly as I can ascertain, the real difficulty involved is doing it."
I rose to sit on the edge of the desk. Miss Kellogg was exactly my height seated, and I needed the difference in levels. Scarcely an unattractive woman, Patricia Kellogg would be classified by men as "wholesome," "girl-next-door," rather than the sexy bird their dreams featured. She was also not at all the type to make the preposterous statements and request she had. Recently, however, I had come to appreciate that the most unlikely women would stand up and vigorously demand their civil and human rights.
Miss Kellogg was one to keep you off balance, for as she began doling out the contents of her briefcase, she explained that her sister-in-law had a bicornuate uterus. During my internship in Cornell Medical, I had encountered such a condition. The uterus develops imperfectly, with fertile ovaries but double Fallopian tubes. The victim conceives easily enough but usually aborts within six weeks. A full-term pregnancy would be a miracle. I glanced through the clinical reports from prominent New York and Michigan hospitals, bearing out Miss Kellogg's statements and detailing five separate spontaneous abortions.