The Surrogate, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book one (9 page)

“I suppose so. I haven’t given it much consideration.”

“Maybe you should,” Jolene snapped. Seeing how startled Hannah was by the vigor of the reply, she added, “Maybe
we
should is what I meant. The two of us. It’s my business, too. And Marshall’s. Because it’s our life that you would be spreading around. Informing the world that I am unable to carry a child to term. Letting everybody know that Marshall and I waited too long to start a family.”

“I would never do that.”

“How much detail would you go into? Would you explain the arrangement we have? Or say that we’re paying you? Most people don’t understand things like that. They gossip and laugh at you behind your back. Believe me, in a town like East Acton they do! I’d hate for us to become laughingstocks.”

Her hands tightened on the steering wheel and the cords in her neck stood out.

“Careful,” cautioned Hannah. “You’re awfully close to the divider.”

Jolene yanked the mini-van back into the center of the lane. Tears had beaded in the corners of her eyes and she was having to force herself to concentrate on the road. Hannah reached over and stroked her shoulder.

“Relax, Jolene. You’re going to have an accident. Look, it’s not important. We don’t have to tell anybody, if you don’t want to. It doesn’t matter to me.”

“Really? You wouldn’t mind?”

“Nobody has to know a thing. Whatever you want is okay by me. Anything.”

With a sigh of relief, Jolene loosened her grip on the steering wheel and blinked away the tears. “Oh, thank you, Hannah. Thank you for being so understanding.”

Seeing the Beacon Hill turn-off up ahead, she edged the van to the right, cut off a pick-up truck, which honked angrily at her, and sailed triumphantly onto the exit ramp.

1:17

Dr. Johanson always made her smile.

“So how is the lovely young lady today?” he said, stroking his goatee. His eyes were merry with a mischief that was more common in Swiss elves than Boston obstetricians.

“How do I look?” Hannah replied, flirtatiously.

“Like a rose. A pink, beautiful rose. Such an exquisite complexion.” Dr. Johanson was in an expansive mood. “Very first time I meet her, I tell myself, ‘We will have no trouble with this one.’ And it is true, yes? No problems so far. No problems in the future. I am not often wrong about these things.”

Jolene vigorously nodded her agreement and the receptionist smiled supportively, although Hannah suspected she’d heard her boss carry on like this more than once.

The doctor held up a cautionary index finger. “But we must not be foolish. We still do the check-up. We still do all the tests. So you will please excuse us now.” He made a bow to Mrs. Whitfield and ushered Hannah into the examining room, closing the door behind her, while she changed into a hospital gown.

The full-length mirror on the back of the door reflected her naked body. She had examined her swelling abdomen at home, but now she noticed how much her hips had widened. Her bottom was larger and rounder, as well. She wasn’t fat, though. The changes were offset by the fullness of her breasts. She had always thought of herself as spindly, but what she was seeing was a voluptuous woman. She looked like a mother.

As much as she could, she tried to avoid the word, even in her thoughts. Jolene was the mother. It was Jolene’s egg and Marshall’s sperm. She was the incubator, as Dr. Johanson put it. Except that she didn’t look like an incubator. The expanding woman in the mirror, flush with the new life awakening within her, looked like a mother. There was no other word for it.

She placed her hands gently on her stomach. “How ya doin’ in there?” she whispered.

Dr. Johanson’s rap on the door broke the mood. “Are you ready, Hannah?”

“Just a second.” She took one last look at herself and filed the sensual image away in her mind, before slipping on the hospital gown. “You can come in.”

The routine was familiar by now. Dr. Johanson weighed her, took her blood pressure, listened to her heart and drew some blood. Then, he asked if she had any complaints.

“I don’t sleep through the night any more,” Hannah said. “It’s hard for me to get comfortable. Mostly, I wake up because I have to go to the bathroom. Three, four times a night.”

Dr. Johanson made a notation on his clipboard. “Nothing abnormal about that. It is important that you drink lots and lots of water. And who wouldn’t be a little uncomfortable with all that you are carrying around? Like a sack of vegetables from the garden. Yes?” He chuckled. “Now lie back. Let’s measure, shall we?”

Hannah eased herself back on the examining table. The doctor took a tape measure from his pocket, placed one end at her pelvic bone and ran the tape up to her belly button. “21 centimeters!,” he announced. “Perfect! Not too big, not too little. You are growing at just the right rate. But to make sure…”

He wheeled a heavy piece of machinery to the edge of the examining table. Before he angled it away from her, Hannah saw a TV screen out of the corner of her eye, and rows of dials and buttons on the futuristic console underneath it.

He gently rubbed mineral oil on her abdomen. “Is cold, no?”

“A little. What is this for?” Hannah asked.

“Not to worry. Just taking a few pictures to make 100 percent certain that everything is developing normally. It is all done with sound waves, so you won’t feel a thing. Do you know that in the World War, the Navy developed this technology to pinpoint the position of submarines in the ocean? And now we use it to pinpoint the position of the baby in the amniotic sac. That is progress for you, no?”

He turned on the machine and began to move a small plastic device - not unlike a computer mouse, it seemed to Hannah - back and forth across her stomach. It tickled.

“So how are the Whitfields treating you?” he asked, keeping an eye on the monitor.

“Too good!”

“They’re feeding you well? Very important. We want a good, strong baby.”

“I eat too much.”

The mouse stopped and Dr. Johanson leaned in closer to the TV monitor. Then it started moving again, systematically exploring Hannah’s belly. “It’s not the moment to be concerned for the waist line. You’ll have plenty of time to think about that later. Now you enjoy your food. Remember, lots of iron, red meat, spinach.”

He made a series of appreciative grunts, then finally turned off the machine altogether and wiped the oil off Hannah’s abdomen with a moist cloth. “You can get dressed now.”

Jolene was leafing through a home decorating magazine, when Hannah and Dr. Johanson emerged into the waiting room. “No problems,” he proclaimed. “It’s just as I was telling you earlier. Before we know it, poof! our baby will be here. So I see you in another two weeks?”

He handed the receptionist several papers and was about to go back inside, when Jolene spoke up. “As long as I’m here, Doctor, do you mind if I ask you about something? It will only take a minute of your time.”

Dr. Johanson glanced at his wristwatch, then gave Hannah a look that implied these kinds of requests happened all too frequently. Everyone had an ache or a pain, which required only a minute of his time, which was another way of saying a free consultation. It was an occupational hazard.

“Of course, Mrs. Whitfield,” he sighed. “Come this way.”

Hannah picked up a copy of People magazine and tried to interest herself in the cover story about a 16-year-old actress, who had a hit TV series in which she played a forest ranger. The photograph showed her in a bikini on a snowmobile, “Heating up the Wilderness” as the headline expressed it.

The door to the waiting room opened and a woman in her early thirties waddled in, gave a nod to the receptionist and plopped down on the chair opposite Hannah, landing with an audible “ouf!” Hannah looked up: the woman was enormous and her forehead glistened with perspiration.

“Lord, it’s heaven to get off these feet!” the woman said by way of explanation. “This your first?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s my third and my last! I told my husband these tubes of mine are being tied in a pretty little bow after this one. He wanted a boy. What can you say? So he’s getting a boy he can take to the Red Sox games ten years from now, if I don’t drop dead from exhaustion in the next hour. Do you know what yours is going to be?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Some people don’t want to know. Myself, I’m not big on surprises. This way, I figure everybody can give us the right stuff beforehand. Learned that lesson the hard way. My husband went out and bought all these tiny football jerseys, overalls, baseball caps and I don’t know what else for the first one. He even got him little running shoes with cleats. Don’t ask me why. Naturally, he turned out to be a girl and those shoes are still packed away in a drawer somewhere. Aren’t you and your husband just the teensiest bit curious?”

“Either way will be fine by me.”

This is what Jolene meant about having to talk to people. Seeing you were pregnant, they by-passed all the formalities and started firing questions. Hannah couldn’t imagine people going up to a woman who wasn’t pregnant and asking about the state of her ankles or the mood of her boy friend. But pregnancy seemed to be an open invitation to probe.

Eager to avoid further conversation - and experiencing the need to pee yet again! - Hannah excused herself and told the receptionist she needed to use the ladies room.

“You know where it is. Next to the last door on the right.”

Hannah walked by Dr. Johanson’s office, the examining room where she’d just been and an x-ray room. She was about to turn into the lavatory, when she heard the voices of Jolene and Dr. Johanson coming from a room at the end of the hall. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she could tell Jolene was excited. Was Dr. Johanson trying to calm her?

Curious, she tip-toed closer. The door was partially open and the room was dark, except for an occasional flickering of grayish-white light. Jolene and Dr. Johanson had their backs to the door and were standing side by side, watching a television monitor.

“I’m just bursting,” Jolene said. “It’s what I’ve wanted for so long. What we’ve wanted.”

Dr. Johanson drew Jolene’s attention to something on the screen.

“He’s smiling.”

He turned to one side in order to fiddle with some dials and Hannah saw that they were looking at a black and white image on a television monitor. She couldn’t make out what the image was - it resembled a cocoon, something wrapped in a cocoon. Then she saw movement and the shape became clearer to her. It was a fetus. The head was distinct and so were the legs, tucked up against the body, which was curled into a half moon. Straining, Hannah could actually discern a tiny hand resting against a cheek. She was mesmerized.

Dr. Johanson stood up and redirected his attention to the screen, blocking the view. He put his arm around Jolene’s shoulder, pulled her close and whispered something in her ear that Hannah couldn’t hear. The gesture struck her as surprisingly intimate. Not wanting to be caught eavesdropping, she backed away from the door.

The realization hit her with the power of a fist and took her breath away. The fetus on the screen was hers! It was a real human being with tiny hands and feet and a beating heart. And the hand had actually moved! She’d seen it. She really was a mother!

The emotions swirling around in her head made her dizzy. She knew she had to get back to the waiting room quickly before she fainted.

“There’s nothing wrong, is there?” asked the large pregnant woman, as Hannah collapsed into her seat. “You look white as a sheet.”

“I’m fine. I’m just hungry, I think.”

“Tell me about it,” the woman said. “Eat and pee, pee and eat. That’s all we do.”

Hannah forced herself to come up with a weak smile.

“But let me share a little secret with you,” the woman went on. “The day they put that baby in your arms will be the happiest day of your life. And do you know what’s even better than that?”

“What?”

“The second day, the third day, the fourth day and the fifth.”

An ebullient Jolene burst into the waiting room, followed by Dr. Johanson. “Thank you, doctor, for your patience,” she said. Then to Hannah: “What do you say we treat ourselves to a fancy lunch? I know a cute bistro on Newbury Street.”

“If you’d like.”

“That’s what I want to hear,” Dr. Johanson said. “Full meals, good food, healthy portions!” He greeted the large woman. “And how are you today, Mrs. McCarthy?”

“I’ll be doing a lot better, doctor, when I drop this load.”

“It won’t be much longer now, I promise you, Mrs. McCarthy.”

“Ten minutes is too long.”

“Now, now. One more week is all. Step this way please.”

Pulling herself to her feet, Mrs. McCarthy waddled after him. Just as she was about to disappear, she turned to face Hannah. “Remember! It’s worth every second.”

In the hall outside the clinic, Hannah asked Jolene if everything was all right. “You were in there a long time.”

Jolene blithely brushed away her concern. “You know what a worry wart I am. Worry, worry, worry. But Dr. Johanson says I’m fine. It was nothing. Nothing at all. He says I couldn’t be better.”