"The last time, Cecily carried to three months before aborting," Pat Kellogg said. "She nearly lost her mind with grief.
"You see, she was an only child. All her girlhood she'd dreamed of having a large family. Her mother is a very successful businesswoman, and I'd say that Cecily was a mistake as far as Louise Baxter is concerned. I remember how radiantly happy Cecily and Peter, my brother, were when she started her first pregnancy six years ago. And how undaunted she was after the first miss. You've no idea how she's suffered since. I'm sorry; maybe you do, being a woman."
I nodded, but it was obvious to me, from the intensity of her expression, that she had empathized deeply with the sister-in-law's disappointments.
"To have a child has become an obsession with her."
"Why not adoption?"
"My brother was blinded in the Vietnam War."
"Yes, I see." Now that abortions were legal, there were fewer babies to be adopted, and consequently the handicapped parent was a very poor second choice.
"Children mean a lot to Peter, too. There were just two of us: our mother died at our births. Peter and I are twins, you see. But Cecily has magnified her inability all out of proportion, especially because of Peter's blindness. She feels that…"
"I do understand the situation," I said sympathetically as she faltered for adequate words.
"Since I got this idea," she went on more briskly, "I've been keeping very careful charts on my temperature and menstrual cycle," and she thrust sheets at me. "I've got Cecily's for the past six years. I stole them. She's always kept them up to date." She gave me an unrepentant grin. "We're just two days apart."
I smiled at that. "If matching estrous cycles were the only problem involved…"
"I know there're many, many problems, but there is so much at stake. Really, Dr. Craft, I fear for Cecily's sanity. Oh, no, I haven't breathed a word of this to Peter or Cece…"
"I should hope not. I'm even wondering why you're mentioning it to me."
"Chuck Henderson said you'd be interested." No name was less expected.
"Where did you meet Dr. Henderson?" I asked, with far more calm than I felt.
"I've been following the medical journals, and I read an article he wrote on research to correct immature uteruses… uteri?… and new methods to correct certain tendencies to abort."
I'd read the same article, written with Chuck's usual meticulous care, complete with diagrams and graphic photos of uterine operations. Not the usual reading matter for a young woman.
"Well, then, why come to me?"
"Dr. Henderson said that he hadn't done any research on implantation, but he knew someone who was interested in exogenesis and who lived right in my own town. He said there was no reason for me to traipse all the way to New York to find the brave soul I needed, and he told me to ask you how the cats were doing." She looked inquiringly at me.
The name, the question, brought back memories I had been blocking for nine years: memories (I tried to convince myself again) which were the usual sophomoric enthusiasms and dreams of changing mediocre worlds into better ones with the expert flip of a miracle scalpel.
Chuck Henderson had helped me catch the cats I had used for my early attempts at exogenesis. Cats were easy to acquire in Ithaca and a lot easier to explain to an apartment superintendent than cows or sheep. I had had, I thought, good success in my early experiments, but the outcome was thwarted by some antivivisectionists who were convinced that I was using the cats for cruel, devious pranks, and the two females that I thought I had impregnated disappeared forever beyond my control. Chuck had been a real pal throughout the stages of my doomed research, all the while caustically reminding me that good old-fashioned methods of impregnation did not arouse vivisectionists. "He said some pretty glowing things about you. Dr. Craft, and by the time he finished talking, I knew you were the one person who would help me."
"I'm obliged to him."
"You should be," she replied with equal dryness. "He has the highest opinion of you as a physician and as… as a person."
"Flattery will get you nowhere," I said evasively and turned toward the window, aware of a variety of conflicting emotions.
"Will you at least examine our medical records?" she asked softly after respecting my silence for a long moment. "I beg you to believe my sincerity when I say that I will do anything… painful, tedious, disagreeable… anything to provide my brother and sister-in-law with a child of their own flesh and blood."
She might be right, I was thinking, when she said the real difficulty was in doing it. Here was the magnificent opportunity I'd once yearned for, thrust at me on an afternoon as dull as my predictable future. The adventurousness, the enthusiasm of that sophomore could now be combined with the maturity and experience of the practicing physician. I'd be a fool not to try: to be content with the unwonderful.
"From the moment you stepped into this room," I said slowly to the waiting girl, "I've had no thought of questioning either your sincerity or your perseverance, Miss Kellogg."
"You'll do it?" And she began to blush suddenly and irrelevantly.
"Would you mind not boxing me into a corner quite that quickly?"
She laughed by way of apology.
"Let's say, Miss Kellogg, that I will examine the problem in the light of present-day techniques. Which have only been partially successful, mind, on animals." She rose and stretched our her hand to me. I took it and held it briefly, hoping only to express sympathy and respect, not a binding agreement.
"I haven't said yes," I reminded her, alarmed by the look of triumph in her eyes.
"No, but I'm damned sure you will, once you've read all this." And she transferred half a dozen Department of Agriculture pamphlets and other miscellaneous printed documents from her briefcase to my desk. At the door, she turned back, looking contrite.
"I'm sorry about the shocking phraseology I used to attract your attention. I mean, about wanting my brother's child."
I had to laugh. "There's a bit of the showman in the most sedate of us. I'll call you in a few days."
"Grand! I won't call you," and with a warm smile she left.
I heard the street door close, and then Esther had whisked in, staring at me as if I'd changed sex or something. It was obvious that she'd had the intercom key up again.
"You're crazy if you do it, Allison," she said, her large brown eyes very wide.
"I quite agree with you, Esther."
"Of course, you're crazy if you don't at least try," she said, less vehemently, and with a breathiness of enthusiasm that surprised me in my levelheaded nurse.
"I quite agree with you."
"Oh, be quiet, Allison Craft. Have you the least idea of the problems you're going to encounter, or are that Nobel Prize and the AMA citation already blinding you to reality? Women aren't cats… at least not gynecologically."
"Well, in a brief spontaneous thesis or two, I'd say the main problem would be…"
"Be practical, not medical," she snapped.
Esther was herself again. She keeps me out of debt, weasels the income tax down to the last fraction permissible, gets my bills paid on time, copes with hysterical primiparas, new fathers, and doting grandparents, and she's a damned good R.N., too.
"And what are your visible monkey wrenches?" I asked her.
She held up her left hand and counted by the fingers. "Have you considered the moral issue if someone finds out she's giving birth to her brother's child?"
"A different hospital, in another town or state."