The Clone's Mother

By Cheri Gillard

Nurse Kate has a date! An actual date, with a real person. Not just a Friday night with her finicky cat or a movie marathon with George Clooney. Mack is more than she could have ever hoped for. But there’s one catch: Mack’s lab partner, Kate’s creepy gynecologist, is up to something. Something dark. Kate finds evidence that the unethical doctor has used his patients as guinea pigs to make a breakthrough in his cloning research. She sleuths around, afraid she’ll scare Mack away if her paranoia is too obvious, but what she discovers might mean Mack isn’t what he says. Is he using her too, like all the men from her past? She won’t risk losing him until she figures out what’s really going on. But time is running out. People start dying. She’d better hurry. Someone knows she’s sorting things out, and that someone is working overtime to keep her quiet. Maybe permanently.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cheri Gillard
• Release date: Apr 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311078650

Cheri Gillard

Award-winning author Cheri Gillard has been a freelance writer and editor for twenty-five years, working for several publishing houses and companies as a writer or editor for projects, books, magazines, and curricula. She earned the coveted IndieB.R.A.G Medallion for "Chloe's Guardian," Book 1 of the Nephilim Redemption series, as well as winning several other awards for her fiction over her writing career. For several years, she was a judge for the Paul Gillette Memorial fiction writing contest. Before writing, she was an obstetric and NICU registered nurse, but she hung up her nurse's cap when she gave birth to quadruplets. She blogs about life raising quadruplets and shares photos at cheri_and_quads on Instagram. She lives with her family in Colorado.

Book preview

Eighteen Months Ago

The two children couldn’t have known their twilight game of hide-and-seek would end in disaster. They kicked up snow with their fur-lined boots, skipping in bliss beneath the darkening canopy of frosted spruce trees. They thought it was an ordinary evening at the cabin. Their giggles mixed with the streams of white breath puffing from their mouths.

The boy, an eight-year-old with thick, dark curls bouncing along the edge of his gray wool cap, gripped the mittened hand of his younger sister. She had the same dark hair, but with curls more relaxed that flowed down her back from beneath her crocheted pink hat, the same color as her cold-nipped nose. They both had the same violet eyes—quick, bright, and unforgettable. The pair was inseparable.

When they noticed their mother’s parked SUV in front of the log cabin, the boy pointed to it and the girl knew what he meant. It would be a great hiding place for their game with the kids from the other cabins.

The boy opened the door. The interior light switched on, projecting a blue patch of light onto the snow where they stood.

Shh, he said with a finger to his lips.

She nodded.

He signaled for her to climb in, then followed after her and pulled the door closed. They crawled to the back and arranged a red plaid blanket over their heads and hunkered down to wait for the other children to find them.

The cabin screen opened and the cold, stiff spring screeched. A woman sprinted toward the SUV as the pine door slapped back into its frame with a sharp clap.

The door shot open again, this time the stretching spring muffled by the barking voice of a man.

Jackie! Come back here, he yelled, lurching with a limp toward her. You will do as I say.

She groped to get the car door open before he reached her.

Where do you think you’re going? Get out of there! He floundered around the hood, closing the gap between them.

She jumped in, then slammed and locked the door.

Jackie! He reached and rattled the door handle. Get out of there. Right now. Get out. He pounded the window, making her flinch every time he hit the glass.

She flicked her black tangled hair off her bruising eye, trying to see through the tears and the swelling to find the key in her purse. She fumbled around, digging through the jumble of things inside. She needed to slow down but she was too panicked. She threw her wallet on the other seat, then her glasses, her checkbook.

He stumbled back into the cabin. The crack of the screen door was enough to fracture the house.

She dumped the purse upside down. It wasn’t there!

He burst back outside holding his own key to her 4Runner, jabbing the button, unlocking it as he ran toward her door.

She remembered. It was in her sweater pocket. She yanked it out and jammed it into the ignition.

Just when he grabbed the handle, her SUV roared to life and jumped out of his grasp, spraying damp soil and chunks of snow from beneath the tires. The heavy smell of wet earth, mixed with the exhaust, burned his nostrils as he watched her race away down the rutted path, tearing past the towering tree trunks toward the main road.

Jackie, he roared at the shrinking tailgate of her 4Runner. Then he lurched to his own car at the side of the cabin. He scrambled in, slammed his Navigator into gear, and took off after her.

As she sailed down the mountain road, she stole a glance in her rear view mirror. There he was, just as she knew he’d be. His angry headlights glared back at her in the reflection. His bumper roared up to hover mere inches from hers.

With fists clamped white around the wheel, she steered her speeding car around the winding road. He kept his gigantic SUV right on her, blaring his horn in cruel condemnation.

Oh, she would make him pay. He would be forever sorry for hurting her the way he had. He’d hurt her too many times.

When the tight curves in the narrow pavement straightened, the Navigator whipped over the double yellow and soared down the hill alongside her. Just as his car inched forward and came neck and neck with her 4Runner, oncoming headlights flashed blinding high beams. The driver laid on the horn. Her husband hit his brakes and swerved back behind her on the two-lane mountain highway.

The oncoming pickup truck flashed by, its horn still blaring. Once the road opened, her husband surged out again and sped down the straightaway. He finally cleared her car and swerved back into their lane in front of her. He flew down the hill, increasing the distance between them. Then his brake lights flamed. He skidded to a halt, fishtailing sideways through the grit on the road.

The monstrous vehicle sprawled over both lanes directly in front of her. She jerked the wheel as far to the right as she could and smashed the brake into the floorboard. Her car screeched in front of the Navigator, skidding so close it blew the dirt off the Navigator’s paint. The tires screamed across the asphalt. Burnt rubber scorched the air.

She missed the Navigator.

She hit the guardrail dead on.

Chapter 1

April

After seeing them thousands of times, I’ve just figured out that all those busy, random wispy pink and blue lines on the vinyl wallpaper are storks. They’re in flight with cloth slings in their beaks, delivering little bundles of joy. I guess this is the first time I’ve actually looked at them. Lying here in this hospital bed has given me the time. Always before, I dashed in and out of these rooms so often, I never bothered about the wallpaper. That’s when I was working. Kate Johnston, R.N., caregiver, helper, healer.

But now I’m on the other end of the stethoscope.

I’m not sure if I’ll be back to work once this is over. It might be too hard. I don’t know—can’t know yet—how this is going to play out.

It all began last summer. That’s when things started to change. I had no idea the life I’d grown accustomed to would disappear. Forever.

We were suffering a string of sweltering July days, the kind Chicago was so good at tormenting us with, when you had to shower twice a day, pant through a wet wall of humidity to breathe, and cling to the hope that the sun would eventually quit its relentless incineration of the city and give it a rest for a few almost-tolerable nighttime hours.

I’d spent the day sweating on my top sheet instead of sleeping. When I finally gave up and left for my seven o’clock twelve-hour night shift at Florence Nightingale Memorial Hospital—we call it Flo Memorial—the mercury still tickled the tops of thermometers everywhere. The artificial arctic air in the hospital that hit me when I walked in felt better than a frosted, dripping can of Coke rolled over my sweaty forehead.

I was working the graveyard shift, assigned to cover for our vacationing charge nurse. After I got Report from the day shift charge nurse, I hunkered down behind the front desk to figure out what to do with the two extra nurses scheduled for the night. I didn’t need them. The day had been crazy, but right before I came on, all the moms had delivered and moved to Postpartum. Now I had too many nurses and I needed to send them home or find another department in the hospital that wanted them.

Just as I finished my phone call with Postpartum—who only wanted one of my nurses—I looked up and who should stroll in but Sheila Langley, late as usual.

I put down the receiver and swiped a loose strand of hair behind my ear, preparing to deal with Sheila—something I relished about as much as a pelvic exam. She leaned across the elevated reception counter and grabbed the back edge of the Formica with her glistening scarlet claws. She pulled herself over on her stomach and looked down at the assignment sheet in front of me, revealing much more cleavage than I’d ever want to see. Yowza. She’d gone from 34B-minus to Sofia Vergara overnight.

Who’ve I got? she said with no explanation about her tardiness. Her hair—luminous platinum, though in reality she had the same brown as I did—was teased, sprayed, and coifed to perfection. Big, like the 80s were back in style.

Hey, sorry. We don’t need you, I said. I hooked back the hair that wouldn’t stay behind my ear, hoping I could pull off the façade of self-assurance. The floor just cleared and Days didn’t have time to call anyone off. You get the night off. Phew, my voice didn’t crack.

I’m staying, Kate. She spat my name like my cat with a hairball. You go home. I just drove all the way here. I’m not leaving. Flo Memorial was on the West Side. She lived somewhere north near Winnetka.

Sheila, to tell you the truth, even if we had patients for you, I couldn’t let you work, not unless you cut your nails and took off that polish. Sorry. Hospital policy. Ooh, that sounded impressive. Pulled that right out like I was regular management or something.

Guess she wasn’t fooled. Geez, the string of profanity she fired at me—I needed to wash my ears out with soap.

I know you’re upset, but you need to keep your voice down. There are still some patients on the floor, I said.

Was that flame coming out of her nose?

Didn’t you see the new memo? I tried. With the JCAH inspection just around the corner, House Supervisor is going to be looking for violations and coming down hard. We can’t make exceptions. Especially for overdone aging bleached Barbie dolls full of silicone.

A few more choice words erupted from her mouth, then she blasted through the doors and off the unit.

Yowza. I think my split-ends were smoking.

I tried to recover over the next many minutes. The shaking didn’t stop until I wrapped myself in a heated blanket from the warmer. Everyone was kind enough to avert their eyes, leave me alone behind the desk, and pretend Sheila hadn’t scorched me to a black, smoldering pile of bones.

***

When the shift was nearly over and everyone had disappeared into the patient rooms—and I’d mostly recovered from Sheila’s searing—an ER volunteer rolled in with a new admit. Her name was Nikki. She had almost as many piercings as I have freckles.

She looked familiar. It took a couple of seconds to figure out where I’d seen her before.

Then I remembered. The bus stop near my apartment complex. She’d always been at a distance, but the spiked aqua hair wasn’t something I could misplace very easily. There weren’t oodles of people with hair that color.

Nikki was only in the very early stages of labor, but her membranes had ruptured, so that bought her a one-way ticket into the hospital until her baby was born. Since it was so close to the end of the shift, instead of assigning her to a staff nurse, I just admitted her myself. I really enjoyed new moms. My job gave me the chance to feel needed. When I was alone with my patients, I had a sense of security and confidence I couldn’t muster elsewhere.

Before I finished showing her around the room, explaining the call light and where to put her belongings, a long-limbed, skin-and-bones, acne-plagued guy swaggered in. His pimply face was ashen gray under all the angry red zits. His hair was jet black, as was his torn shirt, his sagging pants, his boots, his fingernails, the circles under his eyes. He looked like a leftover from the old Goth scene. And he didn’t look healthy. Or clean. He must have only been seventeen, but he looked worn out and used up.

While the father-to-be poked around the room, I filled out the admitting paperwork, asking Nikki questions as I moved down the forms. She answered with few words. Her voice had sharp edges. The boyfriend started opening cupboards and snooping through drawers, messing with the bed controls and then the TV remote. Even though Nikki snapped at him to turn the TV off, he just grunted and cranked it louder. He kept interrupting my questions to make comments to Nikki about the cartoons he’d found to watch.

And to think he can procreate at his own discretion.

While he fiddled, I tried to focus on Nikki and get her paperwork in order. Besides being pregnant, she had lots of medical ailments—all which kept her on several medications.

She used my pen to write down on a scratch pad all the drugs, dosages, and times she took them. She even included some street drugs.

Did your doctor have you stay on these meds your whole pregnancy? I asked while glancing at what she’d written. It was an elaborate schedule, including drugs I’d never used in OB.

I didn’t have a regular doctor. I went to one jerk once, but I never went back. He was a real douchebag.

So…who prescribed your meds?

Got ’em at the clinic. They didn’t ask if I was pregnant. My eyebrows must have furrowed because she said, Don’t worry. I didn’t take them every day. I have a system.

I could see that from the routine she’d mapped out on the paper. I labeled the top of the page then stuck it in my scrub pocket so I could copy them into her chart.

In spite of the bed lifting and lowering several times at her boyfriend’s whim, and the TV blaring while he giggled at Fanboy & Chum Chum, I got her checked in and settled. I finished charting just in time to return to the main desk for Report. Once I clocked out, all I wanted was to go home and hit my own bed. I was shot.

But I’d made a doctor’s appointment. You know, that beloved Annual. Every woman’s favorite day of the year.

I’d made the appointment for that morning with some doctor on my new insurance plan. Once I forked over the check for my co-pay, answered a bazillion questions, and turned and coughed a few times, they would declare me disease-free and I could go on my way with both my mind and bank account eased of their burdens.

After a short bus ride east and a two-block hustle on foot going south, I arrived at the doctor’s office with two minutes to spare. The day was already too hot and I was perspiring after my rush to arrive on time. But once I got there, I languished way too long in the humming waiting room. I thought I’d get right in since I had the first appointment of the day. But I guess it was the same morning everyone else and her sister wanted the first appointment. I was nodding off when a nurse in Bugs Bunny scrubs finally escorted me to a stuffy exam room. She took my vitals, asked a bunch of health questions, then told me to take everything off and put on a stiff paper origami gown. Très chic. Move over, Ralph Lauren. I don’t know how long I waited because I fell asleep on the narrow table. I snored away till some guy shook me out of my coma.

I jerked awake, then stared at him like an otoscope had grown where his nose should’ve been. It took a second to remember where I was. Once it all came back to me, I snapped my knees together and clutched what I could of my paper garments over my dignity.

I couldn’t figure out why this man-doctor with a pudgy face and lima bean eyes stood over me. My appointment was with a woman. I never saw man-doctors. The scheduling secretary had made some kind of terrible mistake.

Where’s my doctor?

No way was this my doctor.

At your service, he said, oozing with confidence. He told me his name but I was too busy arranging my paper clothes around me to listen.

I lifted my head and raised up onto my elbows. No. Wait.

I’m sorry you had to wait. I’m running a little behind.

His nurse stepped into the room, but stood impatiently by the door like she had better things to do.

Lie back down and scoot to the end of the table, he said as he patted the butcher paper that covered the exam table, making it crackle. Let’s not get any later.

He wasn’t giving me a chance to say I’d prefer a female doctor, even if I’d mustered the courage to talk back. Just assumed I’d do what he said.

I hesitated, not sure what to do. I wish my vertebrae didn’t turn to mashed potatoes when men bossed me around.

He sat back on his rolling stool and folded his hands in his lap. His glare said he wasn’t happy with my behavior. His nurse folded her arms and leaned against the door with an eye roll.

I did not like this place. And I sure as heck did not like him. Not one bit. I should have high-tailed it out of there. Without bothering to change out of my origami-wear. You just can’t know when a simple act is about to change your life forever. But his look of censure echoed something from my past. I had to do what he said.

He stopped staring me down and lurched from his chair. Scoot to the end of the table, he said as he clunked the stirrups out from the sides of the exam table. His voice had lost all patience. Jen, go tell my next patient I’ll be there as soon as I can. His eye-rolling nurse, Jen, left.

I scooted, while trying to hold the paper around me. He snapped on his gloves. Reluctantly, I placed my heels in the footrests and lay my head back down.

He examined me, pushing and poking, peeking and prodding. I tried to keep my breathing steady, to not let his touch freak me out. He said I should have a Pap smear. While he used a wooden spatula to scrape the roof of my mouth from between my legs, he asked some routine questions, like when my last period was, if I took vitamins, if there was any cancer in my family.

Then he said, What kind of birth control are you using?

Birth control? The only protection I used was sunscreen. What girl needed birth control when all she’d kissed in years was George Clooney? His photo. In People magazine.

But I wasn’t telling this strange man-doctor that.

So I lied.

Oh, um, my boyfriend. He takes care of things. You know.

He said hmm, then grunted, Huh, then invaded my personal space in some more ways, ways I don’t want to think about, and finally had me sit up. He told me he felt something on my ovary, maybe a cyst.

It might just be normal ovulation, he said, but I want to examine it more thoroughly with an ultrasound.

Do you think it’s serious?

Nothing to waste worry on.

Won’t an ultrasound be expensive?

You shouldn’t let money determine your prescribed medical treatment. You wouldn’t want to let something go that needs attention.

But you just said not to worry about it.

While I tried to process what his words meant, Jen came back in and he told her to give me an ovulation kit. He said to call the day it tested positive. That would be the best time to check the cyst.

I took my egg kit (hidden in a brown paper bag), escaped that horrid place, and boarded the crowded bus for home. A smelly wino near the back, who was conversing with an invisible companion, stopped talking with his psychosis long enough to eye my brown bag. I pulled it closer to my chest and got up to wait by the exit door.

I arrived at my apartment by noon. After I scratched my Himalayan cat, Ollie, behind the ears and emptied the junk from my pockets into a basket on my credenza, I peeled the sweaty scrubs from my body. I changed into my oversized Hello Kitty T-shirt, turned on the fan, and fell across my bed. I was asleep before the box springs stopped wobbling beneath me.

Chapter 2

When I woke up, it was late afternoon. I was hot, sticky, and exhausted. My fan hummed, rotating from side to side and panting hot Chicago breath across me. I needed a shower. A cold, slap-me-in-the-face-and-wake-me-up shower.

One more shift and I’d be off for the weekend. Thank the Lord and his good sense in not making the week any longer than he had. After six days straight, and most of them twelve hour shifts, I was ready for a Day of Rest that lasted at least a month.

I staggered into my bathroom, trying to wake up without hitting a wall or tripping on the clothes on the floor. Then I remembered the ovulation kit. Ugh, who felt like doing that first thing? I asked Ollie if he’d fill the tiny cup for me, but he ignored me.

Figured. Men.

Fine, I’ll do it myself, I told him.

After wrestling with the cellophane wrapper, I finally won and got the plastic off and figured out how to use the stupid thing. I can’t imagine that I really need this, I told Ollie. Then the anxious side of me whispered, It’s probably some rare condition that will kill us even before we can finish peeing all over our hand.

Shut-up. I didn’t need the drama.

I ran the test. Negative. No egg. Good. Onward ho for another day. I showered and pulled on a tank top and shorts.

Though it was nearly five in the evening, I was craving breakfast. I could’ve killed for a Denver omelet and banana nut muffins. Or at least hurt someone really badly. I looked in the fridge and only found three different containers of green fuzzy stuff. Deciding against trying to improvise a Denver omelet from their contents, I settled for a peanut butter and honey sandwich instead—washed down with a can of warm Coke from the sack of groceries I’d forgotten to put away. At least I got variety. Ollie’s food was always the same. He needed consistency. The vet said so. She thought the month that Ollie refused to use his potty box was because of lack of consistency in his life.

I’m leaning more toward my theory that I’d not changed the litter frequently enough.

I spent the time till my shift was about to start in my tiny apartment. I thought about straightening up some, but then came to my senses. It was too hot for such nonsense anyway.

Carefully, generating as little heat as possible, I dumped the unsorted laundry off the saggy sofa and settled in to watch TV. I’d given up cable to save money, so I watched network TV now.

Okay, so I hadn’t paid my bill and they shut it off. I was going to cancel it anyway. Eventually. Unless I got a raise.

So I was down to five stations, two of them in Spanish—which I didn’t speak, but still sometimes listened to—and about every third day I got PBS, if the moon was right, Ollie was sitting by the TV, and I held my arms in the air to bounce the signal toward the rabbit ears. At least I still got a few of my favorite programs on the three networks I could understand.

I watched one of my shows, and then the local news. When it finished, I turned off the tube. Ollie protested. He liked to watch David Letterman, always hoping for stupid pet tricks. But it was time to go to work. And I hadn’t broken the news to him yet that David had retired.

***

The unit was slow again, so I had only one patient and would be assigned the first admit. Our charge nurse was back from Disneyland, so I didn’t have to pretend to be managerial. I got to just disappear into my patient’s room and do real nursing.

Nikki was my lone patient. Nothing had happened for her during the day, so she was on the schedule to start Pitocin in the morning. Oh, the wonder of Pit. You take an excruciating event and make it worse. Pitocin gets pumped into the veins until the uterus contracts to the point of explosion, then you lock it down at that perfect level and wait for one of two things to happen. One—the poor mom goes berserk, kills everyone around her, and then blows into pieces all over the room. Or Two—the mom pushes something as big as a watermelon through something as narrow as a baby bootie.

Moms usually go with choice Number Two. Eventually, anyway. But every single one of them considers Option Number One for a time.

So this was Nikki’s fate. I didn’t have to be anywhere else for a while, so I decided to spend some time with her, in case she wanted to talk. Or ask any questions.

Or explode.

It had been good news in Report that her glamorous beau had hit the trail after the dinner trays were passed out. I didn’t really want to have to deal with him for the night. If he was around and thinking of touching any baby produced on my watch, I’d have to grab him by the ear, drag him to the sink, and scrub his filthy fingernails till they shined.

What a mother figure I would make. And to think I’d sworn off ever having kids of my own. But attend enough watermelon v. bootie events and you figure out there’s no way you’re going to let that kind of thing happen to you. No way, José.

My cousin, Anna, had spent the last ten years trying to have a kid and would have been thrilled to sacrifice her body on the altar of childbirth.

Not me. No sir.

I knocked on Nikki’s door and heard a faint voice. I let myself in and was surprised to find a very petite, scared looking young lady in the bed.

A couple of the metal things were removed from her face, and her blue spikes were no longer at attention.

Hi, Nikki, I said.

She rolled to face me.

Hey. Her voice had lost the sharp corners.

How you feeling?

My back is killing me.

How about we strap the monitor on for a few minutes and see if anything is happening? Your contractions might be starting up.

She wriggled up her gown to present her soccer-ball-sized belly. While I gooed up her skin with warm jelly and put the belt next to her butterfly tattoo, she settled into her pillow.

So Dad’s gone home for the night?

Gone for good.

I raised my eyebrows but didn’t press her.

He isn’t the father. We’ve only been together a little while. He got freaked out and had to get away.

My guess, he probably needed to reload. His dilated pupils had told me he took something stronger than aspirin to deal with life’s pain.

Hey, look, I said pointing at the squiggly hump the monitor’s jerky needle was drawing across the graph paper. Back hurt right now?

She was squirming enough for me to know.

Yeah it hurts. Is that what a contraction looks like?

I explained how the transducer picked up the tightening of her uterine muscle and registered it as a swelling hill on the strip. I think you’re progressing without any help from Pitocin. That’s good.

I strapped the fetal monitor transducer above the uterine monitor and a rapid, hollow kewhewhewhe whooshed out of the speaker.

Nikki said, Does it sound okay?

Sounds great. Doing just like it’s supposed to.

Good. She paused a moment. I tried to do the best I could. I’ve stayed clean since I found out I was pregnant.

I bet it’s been tough.

What’s not?

Too true.

She turned her big, frightened eyes to me a moment. Tears puddled on her lashes, but I could tell she used every iota of strength she could summon to keep from breaking down.

I probably broke every rule in the blue-spiked-metal-pierced-and-liberally-tattooed-rule-book, but I picked up her hand and held it.

Whacha thinking? I asked.

What do you know? She didn’t yank her hand away. A tear let go, then another, chasing the first down her cheek. She held onto my hand like a scared child. And she started talking.

She told me about losing her mom to cancer when she was only twelve, and losing her dad to booze a couple of years later. She didn’t know where he was, or if he was even alive. Then she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder right after she went to live with her grandparents. They tried to take care of her, to support her, but they just never seemed to get it, Nikki said. They’d never been able to understand her. She eventually ran away and lived with a group of older kids, and it was downhill from there.

But when she turned up pregnant, she pulled herself together and decided she’d do at least one thing right with her life before something worse happened. Before it was too late.

Wow. Hard to believe this virtuous kid lived beneath the tough, mean façade. I couldn’t help wondering where she might be if her life hadn’t been so torn apart by her mother’s premature death.

She said, I won’t be able to stay clean once this is over. And I can’t take the baby with me where I’m going. I’m putting her up for adoption. I need you to find some parents.

Another wow. This had never happened to me in all the years I’d been in nursing. She waited while I tried to find where my voice had gone.

You do know people who want a baby, don’t you? She slipped her hand from mine and plucked the covers on her bed. She averted her round eyes to the wall.

My skeptical side argued with my hopeful side while I tried to figure out how to respond. My non-biased professional side finally answered.

Are you sure, Nikki? This is a huge decision. I reached out to still her hand that picked the fuzz balls off the blanket draped below her mound of belly.

She narrowed her eyes at me. It’s already made. An edge had crept back into her voice. I’m going to do this. Can you help me? Do you know anyone?

I felt guilty. Yes, there’s a couple I know.

They good people?

The best you could meet. I meant it sincerely, but it sounded like a sales pitch.

Tell me about them. The sharp edges had dropped back out of her voice. Then she moaned, cussed, and closed her eyes. Wait, another one’s coming. Her eyes refocused on me once the contraction had passed.

Well… I put my hair behind my ear. She’s my father’s sister’s daughter—my cousin, Anna. She’s thirty-four. Been married twelve years to Joe, her high school sweetheart. They’ve tried to have kids for ten years but can’t, even with all kinds of treatments. They have a dog—a little beagle, like Snoopy. That’s his name too. Joe’s a CPA. Anna’s a third-grade teacher. She’s very meticulous about everything. Let’s see. They’re healthy, happy, you know. All that kind of thing. I caught my breath a moment, trying not to let my hopeful side take over, then pressed on. They’ve gone through the whole adoption evaluation process already. They’ve just been waiting for a baby.

Do they love each other? She looked at me more earnestly than ever.

They’re like newlyweds, I said. And meant it. They actually still adored each other, unlike so many other couples I knew.

Will you call them, see if they want my baby?

Oh, I know they’ll want your baby. But I don’t think I can just call them. We should contact a mediator or something, if this is what you want. This was surreal. Can I really be just a phone call away from getting a baby for Anna? I know someone, a lawyer. He’s my uncle. He’ll help, and it won’t cost you anything. I’ll call him and see what he says, okay?

Nikki nodded, but then another contraction distracted her and she said no more.

I’ll come back in a few minutes. She nodded, her eyes shut as she tried to deal with the pain. Though