Three weeks later I repeated the ultrasound scan, hearing again the familiar refrain as I wiped a smear of conducting oil across her smooth belly: ‘Everything okay?’
‘I haven’t started yet,’ I said.
Everything seemed in place: head, arms, legs, scrotum. Scrotum? For some time I stood paralysed, staring at the screen, disbelieving.
Mary-Beth lifted her head, her belly tightened, the image blurred and vanished: ‘What’s wrong?’
I began sliding the probe across her oiled skin again, trying to think, mouthing the usual recorded messages: ‘Everything’s fine. Don’t worry. Relax.’
How much of my surprise had been transmitted? Mothers have a sixth sense for this kind of thing: an ear for the slightest omission, hesitation, nuance.
She lifted her head again and looked into my eyes: ‘If something’s wrong, I want to know, Mara. I’m not an idiot. I have a right to know.’
Things were not so much wrong, as impossible. How to tell her? I regurgitated more soothing noises: ‘The baby looks a bit bigger than expected.’
She was mollified, temporarily: ‘Hollis wants to see the pictures again,’ she said. ‘He’s such a worrier.’
She was speaking for herself, projecting her own anxieties on to her husband.
‘Slip your clothes back on. The two of you can wait in my office. I’ll be along when the films are ready. In a few minutes. Alison can fix you both a coffee.’
I sat alone in the viewing room, re-examining the printed films. Was it possible that I was looking at an artifact, a flaw in the developing process; that it wasn’t a penis-bud sprouting between those tiny legs?
I picked up a phone and dialled the sixth floor Cell Lab extension: ‘Tad?’
‘Frau Professor?’
‘Tad, something’s come up. I need you down in the Ultrasound suite.’
‘Can it wait? I’m in the middle of something myself.’
‘It’s urgent. Now, Tad. Please.’
I waited, fidgeting; when he hadn’t appeared in a few minutes I stuck my head into the corridor. He emerged from the lift, taking his time: walking slowly, leaning back into his fat.
I gestured impatiently, he quickened his pace.
He waddled into the room, wheezing slightly: ‘I’m all ears.’
‘Schultz’s gut cell — it was the female half of the sex pair we used? The X chromosome?’
He nodded: ‘You were there.’
‘I was late, remember?’
‘What’s all this about? Is there a problem?’
I tapped the wall screen: ‘What do you make of this?’
He pulled a stool over, eased his bulky backside on to its much smaller surface area, and stroked his goatee thoughtfully.
‘Another ultrasound scan?’ He peered closer. ‘I’m no expert, the head, of course. I suppose this is body.’
I tapped a smaller sub-shadow: ‘And this?’
‘No idea. What’s the problem? Some kind of defect?’
I nodded: ‘You might say that. An extra limb.’
‘A bit small for a limb.’
‘About the size of a penis.’
The significance dawned slowly. He made a hissing sound with his teeth: ‘It’s a boy?’
We stared at the film together, in silence.
‘Could it be an artifact? A bit of umbilical cord?’
I shook my head: ‘I’ve seen hundreds of these. I need to know: could there have been a mix-up at fertilisation?’
‘Mara, I watched Scanlon extract the genes from that gut cell. He was brilliant. Showing off his laser tweezers, showing how to move such tiny things around with his magic beams of light. I’m certain it was the female half.’
‘Any way of checking? Where’s the male half, the half you didn’t use?’
‘In the fridge upstairs.’
‘Would you mind?’
‘I wouldn’t make such a simple mistake.’
Still protesting innocence, he followed me upstairs to the Cell Lab; falling behind, wheezing, as I took the fire stairs two steps at a time.
I was in the Lab, waiting, not knowing where to look, when he arrived, breathless. He reached into one of the storage fridges, flipped through various boxes of wet preparations, finally selecting a single slide. He held it briefly to the light, nodded to himself, and slipped it beneath the microscope. We peered into the eyepieces together, foreheads touching. Tad twiddled the coarse-focus knob; two distorted gut cells swam into clarity; one denucleated. He zoomed in on the other; we began counting filaments.
‘Y chromosome,’ he announced, finally. ‘No doubt about it. The boy half is still here.’
‘Then what is going on?’
‘The ultrasound must be wrong.’
I shook my head: ‘I’ve a knack with those things. I’ve never been wrong at this stage.’
‘What are you suggesting? Bill deliberately made a switch during the fertilisation of the egg?’
The thought hadn’t occurred to me; it was a Tad thought, not one of mine. He was much given to conspiracy theories, theories that would never cross my mind, at least during daylight hours.
‘You were there,’ I reminded him. ‘It happened under your nose.’
‘But what happened afterwards? Between fertilisation and implantation? Maybe eggs were switched on us in the incubator.’
I laughed out loud: ‘Be sensible.’
‘Just a suggestion. I wasn’t serious. Although where else could a change have been made?’
He was rubbing his goatee again, undeterred, warming to the idea of conspiracy. I put it down to Polish ancestry; paranoia was in the blood.
‘You did admit, chérie, that Hollis Schultz wasn’t too keen on a daughter. That he wanted a son and heir.’
‘You’re in cloud-cuckoo land. You think Scanlon and Schultz are in it together? You think Scanlon switched eggs on the orders of Schultz?’
He shrugged, smiling at these delicious possibilities. ‘If not, it comes down to two possibilities. One: the ultrasound is wrong. Or two: we’ve got a freak. Some sort of hermaphrodite. A laser mutation, maybe.’
I nodded. On this, at least, we agreed: ‘Whatever the truth, we’ll need something more concrete. I’ll need a villous sample from Mary-Beth. It’s too early for amniocentesis.’
I walked reluctantly down the fire stairs to the fifth floor, to the waiting parents, wondering how to broach the subject. At the door of my office I halted, prepared my face — smiling reassurance, or the nearest simulacrum I could manage — and pushed in: ‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’
Mary-Beth was sitting on chair’s edge, agitated, an untouched cup of coffee at her elbow. Schultz was standing, staring through the window. I sensed that I was interrupting some sort of discussion, or argument, that had ceased the moment the door opened.
Schultz turned towards me: ‘Professor Fox, Mara, you know we would never agree to an abortion. If there’s anything wrong with the baby, I can’t see that there is any point in knowing. It won’t change a thing.’
‘I want to know,’ Mary-Beth insisted. ‘If it’s a monster, I want to know.’
What could I tell her: it’s not a monster, it’s a boy? It’s that particular species of monster called Boy?
‘It’s not a monster,’ I said, firmly. ‘It’s got a head. And four limbs.’
I slapped the films against my own small viewing screen. There was no risk; untrained eyes would never detect that tiny appendage.
‘I do need to run some more tests,’ I said.
Mary-Beth turned her head away: ‘There is something wrong.’
‘There’s nothing wrong. The embryo — the baby — is a little bigger than I thought. I need to check some hormones. Growth hormones.’
‘Blood test?’ from Schultz.
‘I’m afraid not. A bit more complicated. I need a tiny bit of placental tissue.’
‘How do you do that?’
‘It’s very simple. A small … ah, biopsy through the cervix.’
‘A needle? Couldn’t that hurt the baby? I don’t think we should.’
‘There is a risk. Very slight. I wouldn’t recommend it if I didn’t think it necessary.’
Schultz remained stubborn: ‘Sweet thing — I can’t see that it’s necessary.’
I shrugged, unwilling to insist, knowing that Mary-Beth would misinterpret anything I said. I was desperate to get a clump of placental cells under the microscope, but softly, softly.
‘I want it done, honey,’ she said. ‘For peace of mind.’
‘What difference will it make?’ Schultz turned from her to me, stonefaced: ‘Professor Fox, could we have a second opinion? I’d like to bring Professor Scanlon in on this.’
‘Scanlon? What’s he got to do with it? This is obstetrics, not genetics.’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. But I must insist. I cannot allow this test to be done.’
This was a third Schultz, a version I had not seen before. The short hair on his head was bristling: a fighting dog, about to attack. The surgically-tightened skin of that face, normally fixed in a smile, somehow contorted itself into anger. His reaction seemed out of all proportion.
‘If you can find Scanlon,’ I said. ‘I’m happy for you to talk to him. Of course he’ll defer to me on this. It’s not his field.’
He moved towards the phone; could he locate Scanlon so easily? I hadn’t heard from the man for weeks.
His wife, self-assured beyond her years, ignored him: ‘When can you do it, Mara?’
‘Now,’ I said. ‘We may as well put your mind at rest as soon as possible.’
‘Now would be fine.’
She rose, keeping her eyes averted from her husband who was left holding the phone, watching her, astonished, and followed me into the examination cubicle.
I shut and locked the door.