Ava, p.14
Ava, page 14
Larkin hugged Aubrey and thanked her.
“You’re welcome. Now go pee on your stick.” Aubrey nudged her friend.
Larkin went to the bathroom and squatted over the toilet, holding the pregnancy test between her legs. As she focused on urinating, she thought about what a strange and unrefined way it was to learn about one of life’s most exciting and life-changing events. She listened to her urine dribble into the ceramic bowl and splash onto the test strip. The ridiculousness of the process took her mind off her experience at the pharmacy.
She laid the test on the bathroom counter and stepped out to tell Spencer and Aubrey the results. She was overwhelmingly relieved to learn she was still pregnant, and all three joined together in a hug as Larkin cried softly.
A few days later, Larkin asked Aubrey to confirm with a blood test, and she was grateful when the results were also positive.
Several weeks later, after the fertility clinic was closed for the day, Aubrey did a transvaginal ultrasound on Larkin to make sure all was well. She was able to see the gestational sac, which was located in a good position in the uterus.
“So far, so good, Larkin. I want you and Spencer to come back here in about two months so we can do another ultrasound—not a transvaginal one. Just a standard ultrasound.”
“And this is when you can tell if she’s okay?”
“She’s okay now, Larkin. But I’ll be able to get a good idea of whether everything is anatomically normal.”
“Two months seems like forever,” Larkin murmured.
“Seven weeks will be the earliest we can check. She’ll be at about twelve weeks gestation. Let’s check then.”
“Thank you, yes. I’d like to check the earliest we can.”
“Will do,” Aubrey said as she smiled at her friend reassuringly.
* * *
Exactly seven weeks after Larkin’s initial ultrasound, Aubrey let Larkin and Spencer into the fertility clinic after hours. Larkin had convinced herself something would be wrong. She was afraid to be optimistic and prepared to be devastated again. She couldn’t make herself feel excited or hopeful, and she felt it was better this way. She decided that if she was already deeply entrenched in a pit of disappointment, any bad news would be less painful since she couldn’t fall much further into despair.
And, if something was wrong, Larkin would go anywhere she could if she needed an abortion. No one from the pharmacy had contacted her yet, so she didn’t think they had been able to identify her from the camera footage, and Aubrey, of course, hadn’t reported her pregnancy in the database. Larkin had heard that some clinics in states where abortion was allowed had started helping out-of-state patients, ignoring mandates from other legislatures that they were required to report those women. Their states’ rights were still their own for now.
Larkin lay on the table with Spencer next to her as Aubrey squeezed the familiar cold, viscous substance onto her bare lower abdomen. She stared at the tubular lights flickering overhead and concentrated on their harsh buzzing noise rather than looking at the monitor. She heard the heartbeat right away, as she had for Maeve, and every muscle in her body tensed as she steeled herself for the bad news.
“Larkin, look. Look at your baby,” Aubrey urged. “All is well.”
Larkin raised her head and looked at the monitor as Aubrey pointed to the baby’s arms and legs and heart and beautifully developing brain. She was perfect. She was whole. Larkin felt herself being lifted from the deep emotional hole she had been ensconced in for a decade.
“I don’t believe it. In the best way, I don’t believe it,” Larkin said as she wept.
Spencer hugged her and covered her face in kisses, and then he hugged Aubrey.
“What’s next?” Spencer asked Aubrey. “Besides getting a nursery ready and pampering Larkin and choosing a name?”
“Well, my work here is done. Now you’ll make a new-patient appointment with Dr. Parrish, and you can be seen by a doctor during daylight hours instead of under the cover of darkness.” Aubrey laughed.
Larkin’s happiness was momentary. She was anxious throughout the pregnancy, convinced at every stage that something awful was going to happen. She was scared to buy anything for the nursery and declined any offers for a baby shower. She would not allow herself to enjoy being pregnant because she had convinced herself that something bad would happen to the baby if she let her guard down. Dr. Parrish couldn’t provide enough reassuring words, perform enough ultrasounds, or do enough laboratory tests to stop Larkin from catastrophizing. She started taking Zoloft again to help with her anxiety and went to her therapist weekly. Spencer and Aubrey also tried to put her mind at rest, but it was constantly racing with memories of being pregnant with Maeve. She could not and would not allow herself to simply relax as she prepared for bad news. Her entire pregnancy and labor were just as fraught with fear as the last one.
It wasn’t until January 2, 2042, at 9:15 p.m., when she, Spencer, their parents, and Aubrey welcomed a healthy seven-pound, seven-ounce Ava into the world that Larkin could breathe a sigh of relief.
PART III
CHAPTER 24
June 24, 2047
AP News
President Montgomery praises passage of a nationwide ban on abortion and birth control on twenty-fifth anniversary of Dobbs decision
Abortion rights activists working rapidly with international suppliers to traffic birth control and abortion pills into the United States
“Slow down, Jameson! I can’t breathe!” Ava giggled. She and Jameson were running in the backyard. They chased after Cecelia, who tolerated their excited squeals better than her avian sisters did. They warily remained near the coop to quickly retreat inside if needed. When the children finally caught her, they sat on the ground, taking turns gently stroking her feathers and softly speaking to her like they’d speak to a baby sister they wanted to protect. They both loved the chickens and desperately wanted the chickens to love them back. Fortunately, Silkies are a very friendly breed. Once the kids sat down and were calm, the other chickens approached them.
Ava was now five years old. She was a bright and curious girl with large hazel eyes and light brown hair, like her mother. She had also inherited her mother’s persistent inquisitiveness. Spencer and Larkin had nicknamed her the Duchess of Whyvaria because of her relentless need to know immediate and precise answers to every question she posed. “Because” or “I don’t know” were unacceptable in the Duchy of Ava.
Jameson was almost four. He and his mother, Aubrey, visited often, and he had adopted Ava’s habit of asking why? He seemed to have imprinted on Ava, following her everywhere like a gosling follows a mother goose. He got up when she did, walked when she did, and ran when she did, always just a step or two behind. He was quieter than Ava, content to be in her presence listening to and learning from her. He never threw the kind of tantrums his mother had been warned he would at this age. When he was upset or scolded, he would simply hold his head down for a bit, quietly thinking, and would return to playing after a short period of reflection.
“How do chickens make the eggs?” Ava asked Larkin. She petted Lola while Jameson held Cecelia.
Larkin, who was cleaning the coop, replied, “Well, they start with the yellow part, the yolk, in a special part of their belly called the oviduct, and that’s where the white part of the egg is made as well. Then the hen makes a hard shell around it. The whole egg makes a perfect package to feed and protect a growing baby chick. But our eggs don’t grow baby chicks, so we are able to use them for food instead.”
“Why don’t they grow baby chicks?”
“Yeah! Why?” Jameson interjected.
“Because they don’t have all the instructions they need to make a baby chick. The hens have half the information. The rooster has the other half, and we don’t have a rooster.”
“What kind of instructions?”
Larkin thought briefly and replied, “Remember when your dad and I were putting together your big-girl bed in your room? We needed to follow instructions to show us how to put it all together.”
“How does the rooster give the hen the rest of the instructions?”
“Well . . . chickens kiss, but in a very different way from how people kiss. They both have an area of their private parts called a cloaca, and when their cloaca ‘kiss,’ the rooster is able to give the hen the rest of the information needed to make a baby chick.”
Ironically, cocks don’t have cocks, Larkin mused. And human embryos start with a developing cloaca, and if it doesn’t disappear during development, they develop an anomaly called mermaid syndrome, she recalled from her comparative biology course, one of the seminal educational moments that had cemented her belief in evolution.
She hoped she’d explained it well enough for Ava to understand. The sex and mating part really wasn’t the hard part—it was relatively simple to explain with chickens—but the complicated embryology and genetics were too much to grasp at her age.
“Oh. Okay,” Ava said as she thought about this new information. “How long does it take to make the egg?”
“Hens are fast! It usually only takes them a day to make an egg. That’s why we can gather the eggs today and there will be more in two or three days. Silkies don’t lay as often as other chickens. Some chickens can lay every day.”
“Does it hurt them to lay eggs?”
“I’ve read that if the chickens are really young, or the eggs are really large, it can hurt.”
“Aww. Poor Silkies!” Ava said as she petted Lola and kissed her head. Jameson copied her and kissed the top of Cecelia’s fluffy head.
“But since they lay smaller eggs and they are older now, I don’t think it hurts as much—if it hurts at all.”
“And why are the eggs different colors?”
“That’s all in the instructions, too! The color of their egg is partly caused by their bloom—that’s the coating on the outside of the egg that keeps germs out. Did you know you can tell what color egg a chicken is going to lay by looking at their earlobes? The color of the earlobes is usually the color of the egg.”
Jameson and Ava started looking for the earlobes on the hens they were holding. Larkin picked up Rhiannon and sat down with them.
“What color eggs does Rhiannon lay?” Larkin asked them.
“Brown!” they answered in unison.
“That’s right. So, look here,” Larkin said as she brushed the soft feathers away from the side of Rhiannon’s head. “And what color is her earlobe?” She showed them.
“Brown!” they said again and laughed.
Ava and Jameson both found white earlobes on their hens. They were ecstatic over this new piece of information, along with the discovery that chickens with green eggs would have green earlobes. They then picked up Vera and were able to find her reddish-brown earlobes. Next, they asked to go to the neighbors’ house to investigate their chickens’ earlobes.
“I’m sure we can go over later,” Larkin said. “Let’s wait until we see them outside.” She was amused that this was so fascinating to them, but she also knew she would have loved learning all of this when she was younger.
Aubrey sat on a bench under the shade of a live oak tree watching the children play and listening to their conversation and laughter. Larkin went inside and came back with iced tea for them and ice water for Ava and Jameson, who were unbothered by the heat of the already sweltering summer morning.
Ava and Jameson ran over to get their drinks with Jameson still cradling Cecelia in his arms. Larkin took both cups and handed one to him as they sat on the grass to drink. He was almost as big as Ava with curly blond hair, chestnut eyes, and golden brown skin.
“Thank you so much, Larkin,” Aubrey said sincerely as she took a glass of tea from her.
“You’re welcome! I hope it’s not too sweet. My mom made it earlier in the week when she was watching Ava.”
“Oh, the tea is great, but I was thanking you again for Jameson. I know I’ve thanked you a million times already, but it feels like it will never be enough.”
“Mi uterus es su uterus.” Larkin laughed. “I was more than happy to help.”
Larkin had suggested being a surrogate for Aubrey before Aubrey had even thought to ask. In hindsight, Larkin’s pregnancy and delivery with Ava had been thankfully easy and uneventful, and she wanted that experience again. She especially wanted it for her friend. Aubrey hadn’t been sure if she would ever use the eggs she had frozen before her chemotherapy treatments, but it was life-changing when Larkin made such a generous and selfless offer. Aubrey’s frozen eggs had undergone the same genetic splicing procedure as Larkin’s eggs, and Jameson carried the same gene as Ava on his X chromosome. If he had children someday, he would pass the gene to his daughters.
“You did an excellent job of being peppered with questions. You must be mentally exhausted,” Aubrey said to Larkin as she sipped her tea.
“Exhausted but happy.”
The three siblings who lived next door had joined Ava and Jameson in the backyard. The kids put down their cups and asked again if they could go to the neighbors’ house to see their chickens. Their mothers agreed to let them go as long as they stayed in the backyard and came right back after completing the earlobe inspection. Aubrey and Larkin watched as their children excitedly ran the short distance.
“It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? That we have these two amazing humans to raise?” Larkin asked.
“It is,” Aubrey said. “I never thought I would have children. It’s been a good dream, and I never want to wake up.”
“After Maeve, I felt like I was in a bad dream I couldn’t escape. And now, I just look at Ava and I’m shocked that this is my life.”
Ava and Jameson ran back to them, both yelling “Mama!” and “Mommy!” over and over. They stopped, out of breath, and told them, “All brown! Brown eggs! Brown earlobes!” Their voices were filled with pure, unadulterated enthusiasm.
Larkin praised them. “Great job, guys! Fantastic investigative work!”
“Can we play in my room now?” Ava asked.
“Sure!” Larkin replied.
Ava grabbed Jameson’s hand as they ran inside the house. As the back door closed behind them, Aubrey asked Larkin, “Have you and Spencer decided when to tell her?”
“Yes. When she’s closer to puberty. We still have some time.”
CHAPTER 25
Summer 2047
James Davis Jr. entered the Beloved Ones Memory Care Facility in Memphis with books, chocolates, a new pair of pajamas, and warm nonslip socks. As he walked down the hallway, several residents waved or reached out to him, seemingly confident that they recognized a familiar face. An elderly woman wearing a turquoise kaftan buttoned up the front slowly made her way down the hall using a walker with tennis balls embedded in the back legs, nodding and smiling at James.
It made James wonder how it was determined which tennis balls would be worthy of Wimbledon’s grass courts, which would be used to help the elderly with their mobility, which would keep chairs and desks from scuffing the floors at elementary schools, and which would be lobbed into a lake for golden retrievers. They all had their own evolutionary path. All served a worthy purpose, but with very different destinies.
When he arrived at his father’s room, there were two balloons taped to the laminated biography hanging to the left of the door. In a few paragraphs, it summarized the highlights of his father’s life. His parents’ wedding photo was above it, the same framed photo he had in his office. One of the nurses had placed a thin plastic banner with a cheery “Happy Birthday” above the door.
James set the items he’d brought on the bed, which was covered with a blue plaid comforter. His dad dozed in a large recliner. He had a small pillow behind his head and was softly snoring. James grasped his knee and gently shook it. “Pops. Pops! I’m here.”
His father woke up and instantly beamed with delight, the wrinkles in his face coming to life around his eyes and forehead. He held out his arms for an embrace.
“My son. My pride. My joy. I need nothing else today.”
“Well, I hope you need your favorite chocolate, too, because I had to smuggle it past the nurses,” James said as he took a seat on the bed.
“Ah, yes, I guess I did need a little something else today. Thank you, son.”
“Happy ninetieth birthday. And many more,” James said as he unwrapped a few dark chocolates with sea salt and gave them to his father.
“I’m ninety today?” he asked with surprise, then repeated softly to himself, “Today I’m ninety. Today I am ninety.”
“Yes, Pops, that’s right.”
“And you are here because I am ninety?”
“Well, yes, but I also visit at least every two weeks.”
“You’re a good son.”
“Thank you. I try.”
“Is your mom here, too?”
“In spirit, yes. Always.”
“Well, that’s nice.”
James did visit every two weeks or more, always bringing books and poetry to read to his father. He would also update him on his research. He wasn’t sure how much of it his dad understood, but he listened intently to every word, and it helped James to talk about it out loud, to organize his thoughts and decide on the next steps.
He had previously told his father that harvesting eggs and altering them in vitro, as he’d done with Larkin, was a cumbersome and expensive process. He needed to develop a way to make the process affordable and accessible to all women, and it would be essential to simplify the procedure for it to work on a wide scale. It was becoming more pressing with the current laws in place.
Shortly after Larkin became pregnant with Ava, he began working on an intramuscular injection using a viral vector that would selectively bond to human eggs, inject the genome into the cell, and complete the splicing process in vivo. The technology had been available for decades and had been used to develop several successful vaccinations. Both Susan and Larkin were putting in additional hours to assist in his work, and he believed he had succeeded after several years of experimentation.
