Her thoughts whirling in a crazy mixture of hope and fear, Lara thrust her head into Olivia’s office. “Any word from the good Dr. Braun?”
“Honey, these things take time.” Olivia’s eyes were gentle as she glanced up. “Gene splicing is a complicated process, and this is a particularly interesting challenge. Helmut has worked late every night this week.”
“I feel guilty asking so much of him.” Lara came into the office and perched on the padded arm of the love seat. “Having a baby ought to be simple.”
“Nothing worthwhile is ever easy.” Olivia glanced back down at the chart on her desk, and Lara felt another stab of guilt for interrupting her boss. She had not been the ideal employee over the last week; twice Olivia had to remind her to pull prescription refill requests from the answering machine. Her thoughts kept drifting toward Helmut’s lab, where her egg and Michael’s sperm waited to begin a baby.
Last week she had been disturbed but not shaken by the news that Dr. Braun had found the suspicious EXT1 and EXT2 in Michael’s DNA. Confident that he could eradicate the genes, she pushed his report to the back of her mind and allowed Olivia to proceed with the follicular aspiration. The procedure, performed under a local anesthetic and sedation, wasn’t painful, but Lara hoped she wouldn’t have to repeat it. “Make sure you take enough,” she had murmured in a sleepy voice as Olivia studied the ultrasound screen and guided the harvesting needle into one of Lara’s ovaries. “I don’t like being the patient.”
After the sedative wore off, Lara drove her freshly harvested oocytes over to the cryogenics lab. With a businesslike nod, Dr. Braun took the biological material from her and placed it into a storage tank, then shoved a folder of forms in her direction. Lara skimmed the first one— an informed consent document stating that she realized the eggs/sperm/ embryos might not survive cryopreservation—and signed it. Another form granted Dr. Braun permission to manipulate the DNA in semen sample #88-GOD3947398, and yet another stated that Lara’s participation in the procedure had not been coerced in any way. She signed both documents. A fourth paper caught her attention—according to the statement, the Muriel Foundation had agreed to subsidize all costs of her care, including all laboratory expenses, medications, prenatal exams, hospital expenses, and genetics research—for two pregnancies.
“Dr. Braun—” She hesitated as he frowned up at her. “What is the Muriel Foundation? And why are they paying for two pregnancies?”
“I told you I could find a grant.” Braun waved his hand as if the matter were inconsequential. “And you might want another baby someday, no? Do not look a gift horse in the mouth, Ms. Godfrey.”
Lara signed the statement. He had done so much for her, how could she complain? The Muriel Foundation was probably one of those private organizations that funded cancer research. She ought to be grateful that Dr. Braun had thought ahead. She was so fixated on this particular pregnancy that she could scarcely think one month into the future, let alone several years.
She signed paper after paper, more routine consents and disclaimers, then paused at the last page in the folder. The entire top portion was blank.
“What’s this?” She waved the page before his eyes and made an attempt at humor. “A blank check?”
Dr. Braun clamped his jaw tight. “What is that? It is legal stuff and nonsense.”
“Well—” Lara hesitated, her mind whirling at his dry response. “It’s a blank page. Is it important?”
“Of course it is.” Braun pressed his glasses to the eyepiece of his microscope and fussed with the magnification control. “Sign it; leave it; I will fill it in later if I need it. How can I know what I will need permission to do until I know what I will have to do? The lawyers, the red tape—you know how foolish it all is. But everything is important.”
“Whatever you say.” Lara signed her name at the bottom of the page and added the date. Braun was probably right. She would hate to have him stop work at some crucial juncture because she hadn’t signed the proper consent form. Recent developments in malpractice and privacy law had made it impossible to even begin treating a patient without a dozen consent forms signed in triplicate.
After signing all the documents, Lara returned them to the folder and stood. The doctor was still peering through an electron microscope, occasionally lifting his head and making notes on a notepad. She wanted to ask if he was examining part of Michael’s DNA, but he wore a concentrated look, an expression guaranteed to insure privacy. Lara left the lab and drove back to the Women’s Clinic, praying that the doctor would have good success in his work.
Though modern medical science had worked wonders for many of her patients, Lara found it difficult to adjust to the idea that her baby would be conceived in a laboratory miles away from home. The conception would still result from an act of love, but in vitro fertilization was a far cry from the route to conception God had designed.
This new life would begin in a laboratory petri dish, under the dispassionate gazes of Dr. Braun, his research assistants, a few students, perhaps a janitor or two. But Lara didn’t care. Once the embryo had grown to the sixteen-cell blastocyst stage, it would be implanted in her womb where her warmth, her food, and her blood would shelter and feed the growing baby.
If only Braun would call with good news.
“Your attention is wandering again.” The sound of Olivia’s voice snapped Lara back to reality. The doctor was studying her, one corner of her mouth lifting in a wry smile. “Keep busy, Lara, and the time will pass quickly. And don’t waste time feeling guilty. Helmut loves a challenge. He’ll probably write a paper on your case and earn all kinds of kudos.”
Lara lowered her chin to the stack of files she hugged against her chest. “If this works, I may name my kid after him.”
Olivia rolled her eyes in disbelief. “Please. A simple thank you will do.”
Lara dropped the files to her side, then rapped lightly on the edge of Olivia’s desk. “You’ll call me if you hear from him? The minute you know something?”
“I promise.” Olivia waved her away, then picked up her recorder. She opened a file and began to dictate her notes, her voice droning in Lara’s ears as she walked out. “Kay McMiller, healthy, well-nourished thirty-eight-year-old, presents with abdominal pain and episodic spotting . . .”
Straddling a lab stool, Helmut Braun leaned back and pulled the surgical mask from his face. Blowing out his cheeks, he glanced at the clock—eleven fifty-five p.m. He had spent hours bent over this microscope, yet he was no closer to a solution than he had been a week ago.
His assistants had all gone home at the usual hour, and now silence lay over the lab like the pall at a funeral. The tense lines on his face relaxed as an irreverent thought struck—a funeral was what they’d be planning for him if Sloane learned that the first fertilized egg had failed to divide after being injected with the Iceman’s DNA.
Yesterday morning he had put egg and sperm together for the first time. Twelve hours passed without the sperm penetrating the barrier around the egg, then Helmut resorted to ICSI techniques. Using a specially designed microscope, tiny needles, and micromanipulation equipment, he held the mature egg with a specialized holding pipette, then vacuumed the sperm into a delicate, sharp, hollow needle. Holding his breath, he gingerly inserted the needle through the zona and into the egg, then injected the modified sperm into the cytoplasm. He immediately followed this injection with another—the artificial chromosome carrying the Iceman’s DNA.
He waited twenty-four hours, preparing another artificial chromosome in case this test should fail, and a moment ago he had checked the egg under the microscope. He had hoped to see two cells, a divided egg, but the oocyte had lost viability. The cell beneath his eye was as dead as stone.
Disappointment struck him like a blow in the stomach. He stood and stepped away from the microscope, swallowing several times to choke back his dismay. He would have to bring another precious egg from the cryogenic tank, and there were not many more to lose.
Pacing, he swiped his hands through his thinning hair and idly wondered why he hadn’t followed his brother’s lead and gone into the military. Kurt was a leading officer in the German army; he and his family lived in a modern Berlin apartment. Kurt played a key role in the changing face of Germany, while Helmut, the brightest Braun son, toiled in obscurity, searching for the experiment, the breakthrough that would catapult his name into the scientific journals and onto the front page of the New York Times. Twice he had been close to announcing a major discovery, once in his study of hematopoiesis and again in his work in the development of mammalian transducing vectors, but in both studies colleagues with better-funded programs had beaten him to publication.
Yet now, in the autumn of his life, Fate had smiled upon him. Destiny had sent Devin Sloane, who offered unique genetic material and an opportunity to establish his reputation. Helmut wasn’t blind to Sloane’s wide-eyed fanaticism, but the corruption of Michael Godfrey’s DNA actually supported Sloane’s theory about the deterioration of the human race. Helmut could not help but believe that this experiment might actually benefit Lara Godfrey. In return for her role in the procedure, she would receive free medical care and the best genetic work the university could offer.
His watch chimed, reminding him of the hour. Midnight. By all rights he should be home with his wife, but he could not relax yet. Olivia had mentioned that Lara Godfrey walked around the office in a tense daze, and Sloane would soon want to know what progress he had made. Unless Helmut accomplished something within the week, the billionaire would not be happy . . . and might be tempted to offer his money and this opportunity to some other geneticist.
Helmut looked around at the lab, his eyes falling upon the small canister that contained the remainder of Michael Godfrey’s deposit. He would have to think of an answer very soon.