“I’m afraid there has been an emergency.”
“I’m doing a bloody egg retrieval!” Dr. Wingate shouted, venting some of his frustration on Mrs. Hargrave.
“Very well,” Mrs. Hargrave said as she backed out of the door.
“Ah, there we go!” Dr. Wingate said with satisfaction. His eyes were glued to the cathode-ray-tube screen.
“Want me to see what the emergency is?” Dr. Arthur asked.
“It can wait,” Dr. Wingate said.
“Let’s get some eggs.”
For the next half hour, time seemed to crawl. Marissa was sleepy but unable to sleep under the torturous probing.
“All right,” Dr. Wingate said at last.
“That’s the last of the visible follicles. Let me take a look at what we’ve gotten.”
Laying the probe aside and stripping off his gloves, Dr. Wingate disappeared with the nurse-technician into the other room to examine the aspirate under a microscope.
“Are you okay?” Dr. Arthur asked Marissa.
Marissa nodded.
Within a few minutes, Dr. Wingate came back into the room.
He had a broad smile.
“You were a very good girl,” he said.
“You produced eight fine-looking eggs.”
Marissa breathed out audibly and closed her eyes. Although she was happy about getting eight eggs, it hadn’t been a good morning. She felt drugged and exhausted and, with the stress of the procedure gone, Marissa soon lapsed into a troubled, drugged sleep. She was only vaguely aware of being moved to a gurney and being transported across the glass-enclosed walkway to the clinic’s overnight ward. She woke up briefly to help switch herself from the gurney to a bed where she at last sank into a deeper, Valium-induced sleep.
Of all the sundry responsibilities and duties of running the Women’s Clinic, Dr. Norman Wingate’s heart rested firmly with his work associated directly with the biological part of the in vitro fertilization unit. As an MD, PhD, cellular biology held the strongest intellectual appeal. And as he gazed at Marissa’s ova through the lenses of his dissecting microscope, he was filled with pleasure and utter awe. There, within his field of vision, was the unbelievable potential of a new human life.
Marissa’s eggs were indeed fine specimens, attesting to the expert administering of the hormones she’d been given during the ovarian hyper stimulation period. Dr. Wingate carefully inspected each of the eight eggs. They were all quite mature. Reverently, he placed them in a previously prepared, slightly pink culture medium within Falcon organ culture dishes. The dishes were then placed in an incubator that controlled the temperature and the gaseous concentrations.
Turning his attention to Robert’s sperm, which had been allowed to liquefy, Dr. Wingate started the process of capitation.
A perfectionist, he preferred to do all the cellular biology himself.
The efficacy of in-vitro fertilization was as much an art of the individual investigator as it was a science.
“Dr. Wingate!” Mrs. Hargrave called, coming into the lab.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but there’s been another development with the Rebecca Ziegler case that needs your attention.”
Dr. Wingate looked up from his work.
“Can’t you handle it?” he asked.
“It’s the press, Dr. Wingate,” Mrs. Hargrave said.
“There’s evena mobile TV news crew. You’d better come.”
Reluctantly, Dr. Wingate looked at the flask containing Robert’s sperm. He hated it when his bureaucratic responsibilities interrupted his biological work. But as the director of the clinic, he had little choice. He glanced up at the nurse technician
“This is your chance,” he said to her.
“Go ahead and finish the capitation, the concentration, and the ‘swim up.” You’ve seen me do it often enough, so go to it. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Then he turned and left the room with Mrs. Hargrave.
“Mrs. Buchanan! Hello! Mrs. Buchanan! Are you with us?” a friendly voice called.
From the depths of a disturbing dream, Marissa became aware of the voice calling to her. She had been dreaming that she was stranded in the middle of a barren landscape. At first she tried to incorporate the voice into the dream, but the nurse was determined to rouse her.
“Mrs. Buchanan, your husband is here!”
Marissa opened her eyes. She was staring directly into the broadly smiling face of a nurse. The nurse’s name tag read “Judith