Strange New Feet Read online

  There is a shuffling sound in the room and then an expectant silence.

  “You do. Who?”

  “A.R.N.”

  “Arn?”

  “Arn?” people are repeating. She can’t see who’s talking.

  “Yes. The militant animal rights group.”

  “Animal Rights Now,” someone offers. Sounds like the attorney. “Ecoterrorists, basically. They sink whaling ships, bomb university labs…helpful stuff like that.”

  “So this is an animal rights statement? How would they even have access to…to implant a chimera embryo in an unsuspecting woman?”

  “How do you know they are the ones responsible, Safia?” Dr. Ackers has taken Rita’s seat. He is a shimmering blur to her right.

  “I met Dr. Mills over the weekend at one of their meetings. She’s one of the founding members of A.R.N. I went with my sister, who is a member. Dr. Mills basically told me that there is something special about Olivia and we needed to figure it out. I just spoke to her on the phone and she confirmed they are responsible. She gave us three days.” Safia flinches as the blood pulsing at her temple begins to feel like a knife.

  “Three days?”

  “Yes, three days before they issue a formal statement about what they’ve done.”

  “To the press?”

  “We’re going to have a mess on our hands.”

  “They can’t do this!”

  “They have already done this.”

  “We can’t do this. We can’t release information about a patient to the press.”

  “It will have to be her mother.”

  “We need to contact the police…maybe the FBI.”

  “Please,” Safia holds up her hand to stop the rising voices. “Please, we have to focus on protecting Olivia. She can’t know about this, at least until she recovers from the surgery. I don’t know what this is going to do to her.”

  “Miss Raine is right,” Dr. Ackers jumps in. “We’ll have to move her to a secluded wing. Post guards to keep the press out. Our responsibility is to our patient first.”

  “What about our responsibility to society?”

  He seems to ignore this. His voice softens. “Safia, you have an established relationship with the mother. I think it would be helpful if you were there when we told her about her daughter.”

  “Yes,” Safia whispers. Her eyes are closed now against the assault of the fluorescent lights. It has arrived in full force. “Good, fine. Morning?”

  “Come on,” he is helping her up. She feels Rita support her other arm. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  Chapter 11

  Safia takes a steadying breath in through her nose, her knuckles and her forehead resting on the door. A dull remainder of pain lurks under her skull. Be strong. She watches herself knock. This must be what it feels like to have an out of body experience.

  “Come in.”

  “Safia!” Sue jumps up and moved quickly to stand in front of her. “What’s going on? They won’t tell me. Please, I can’t take it. You have to tell me what’s wrong with Olivia. Is she going to die?” Her hands, clutching damp Kleenex, now reach forward pleading, grasping Safia’s arm.

  “No, she’s not going to die, Sue.” Safia feels the pressure on the back of her eyes. Stop it. Be strong for her. She takes one of her hands and leads her back to the chair. She glances at Dr. Ackers as she rubs Sue’s shoulder and pulls the other chair closer to her.

  “We’re going to explain everything to you right now, Sue,” Dr. Karen Brennan says softly. She is leaning on the edge of a table against the wall, her arms folded, her head bowed. Safia wonders if she is praying. Caden West, the lawyer, is sitting in the corner trying to be invisible. Sue has started to sob.

  “Okay, Miss Barnes.” Dr. Ackers nods. He is trying hard to steady himself. No emotion. Just explain the facts. Safia thinks it would be better in this case if they could all cry together. Mourn together with Sue. But, she also is trying to build up the wall, keep emotion out of the moment. Ironic, she thinks, emotion is one of the human hallmarks and we try so hard to be emotionless. She remembers Sue telling her Olivia doesn’t have tears. That makes sense now. Horrific sense.

  “As you know, we have run a second set of DNA tests on Olivia’s skin cells.”

  “The ones you ask me about at dinner?”

  Safia nods and grips her hand tighter. Sue moves her wide eyed gaze back to Dr. Ackers, “Okay.”

  “The results were very unexpected,” he falters, lost for a moment in the surrealness of it all.“In fact, completely unexpected. Your daughter, Olivia, has two separate sets of DNA.”

  “Oh. I see. Well..w..what does that mean?”

  Safia can feel her panicking, breathing shallow. She strokes her arm and whispers. “Sue, we’re going to get through this.”

  “Miss Barnes,” he begins again and shakes his head. He tries to speak again, but has to hide his face behind his hand for a moment.

  The Chief of Staff steps in and is now kneeling in front of Sue. She places a hand on her knee, holds her gaze and as gently as possible gives her the news. “Olivia is what we call a chimera. She was created from cells of both a human embryo and…” her lips press together, a white ring forms around her mouth, “and a bonobo chimpanzee embryo.”

  There, it is out. The mother has been informed. It is real. A human-chimpanzee child walks among them and she has a mother and the mother now knows. It can’t be stuffed back into a science fiction movie. The truth has been released to do its worst. They all watch now. Watch her face morph from horror to confusion, her eyes darting back and forth, begging one of them to say something else.

  “A chimpanzee? That doesn’t make any sense. Is this a joke?” she finally manages. Hope softens her face for a moment. She looks to Safia. Safia shakes her head. “What are you telling me?” They watch her struggle to get her mind around it. Suddenly she does and an animal cry is released. She screams. “What are you saying?! Oh my God, oh my god…no, not my baby!” She folds forward and then bucks back up in the chair. She is hyperventilating. “This….can’t…be…true!” She is screaming then fighting for air. Dr. Ackers moves around the desk with a brown paper bag. He is trying to put it over her mouth but she is flailing, pushing him away, screaming, falling on the floor. Safia has lost her battle with the wall. Tears spill over the wall and run down her cheeks and neck. Dr. Brennan is trying to hold her, tears making her eyes shine, too. Dr. Ackers finally gives up on the paper bag and goes back to his desk drawer. He comes back around with a syringe.

  “Sue, I’m just going to give you a sedative, okay?”

  She is lying on her side, sobbing, her face patchy red, her eyes staring at nothing. Dr. Ackers alcohols her limp arm and then pushes in the syringe. Safia leans against the chair and wipes at her cheeks with the back of her hand. Dr. Brennan picks herself up slowly off the floor and smoothes down her skirt.

  “What now?” Dr. Ackers says to no one in particular. No one answers.

  Sue’s body jumps, wracked with sobs, but they are getting further apart.

  “Let’s admit her and keep her on sedatives for awhile.” Dr. Brennan finally says. “Get Olivia moved into Quarantine seven a.s.a.p. Post two security guards.” She looks over at the corner where the lawyer is. Safia can’t see him from her position on the floor. “We need to find out exactly what kinds of laws have been broken here.”

  “You mean besides the laws of decency and humanity?” His voice is raw.

  “Yes, besides those. When Miss Barnes is able, we will need to help her prepare a statement for a press release…by Thursday.” She looks down at the woman sprawled out on the office floor, now twitching and whimpering in her sleep, and presses a palm against her forehead. “How is the rest of the world going to react to the news?”

  ********

  Safia sits in the small plastic chair with her elbows on her knees and her head resting in her hands. Dusk has fallen. It has been a day of unmitigated sadness and panic. She forces
herself to breathe in deeply, filling her lungs and then exhales slowly. To breathe is the only thing she can think to do.

  Olivia stirs in her new bed in quarantine, wing seven—an isolation wing built for victims of a bioterrorist attack. The long fifty-bed hall is silent, empty except for this one child. There are two guards posted outside the door. Safia wonders if they have been told who they are guarding.

  Olivia has been sedated, too. This is a direct result of her question, “Where is my mommy?” It is the only answer they could think of. She needs time to recover. They all need time to recover. Safia doesn’t know what she will say to Olivia if she wakes up, but she can’t leave her here to wake up alone.

  She must have dozed off. A small rustling and then whimpering sound stirs the dark. “Olivia?” She unfolds her legs and tries to set them on the ground. Her feet are asleep and beginning to tingle painfully. “Are you awake?” She knows a nurse has been posted to monitor the video feed from her room.

  “Yes,” she whispers. “Where’s mommy?”

  Safia feels grief lurch in her chest as she forces her feet to carry her to the bed. She pushes a button on the side and an overhead bulb throws pale light on them both.

  “Where am I? I’m scared.” She pulls the sheets up over her mouth as her eyes dart around the shadowy room. “Miss Safia, will you get my mommy?”

  “Sure, honey.” Calm smile. “Right now your mommy is taking a nap because she doesn’t feel well.”

  “She’s sick?” One brown eye, one green eye fill with fear. Safia pushes the new meaning of this observation from her mind. She will not change the way she thinks of this child.

  “It’s just been a very long day. Even grown-ups get tired, right?”

  “I guess so.” Suspicion. Confusion.

  “Knock, knock.”

  That’s fast, Safia thinks to herself.

  “Hello, Olivia. I’m nurse Amy.” Nurse Amy has a long, thin face and dark hair pulled back in a pony tail. “Are you hungry? I’ve brought soup and pudding.” She chatters away as she skillfully checks Olivia’s vitals and the monitor hooked up to her arm. “Chocolate milk. Do you like chocolate milk?” Safia watches for any sign she might know what Olivia is. She doesn’t seem disgusted or even curious. Just another patient. She would surely wonder about the quarantine and the guards. Dr. Brennan must have given her a sufficient explanation. She leaves, then returns with a brown tray of lids, places it on a table with wheels and rolls it closer to the bed. “Try to eat something, okay?”

  Olivia nods, her mouth still hidden by the sheets.

  “I’ll be back in when she’s finished.” Nurse Amy gives Safia a conspiratorial look. She knows this means she will be back in to sedate her. When she leaves again, Olivia pushes off the covers and climbs into Safia’s lap, her blue bear clutched tightly to her chest. She begins to make whimpering sounds.

  “Would you like me to tell you a story?” Safia pushes the emotion from her voice, and begins stroking the side of Olivia’s face. She feels her nod against her shoulder. “Okay. Once upon a time there was a very special little girl.” She tilts her chin up and blinks to keep the tears from escaping her eyes.

  “Was her name Olivia?”

  “Yes…yes, it was.” Olivia’s breathing settles down and she makes a soft ‘humpf’ sound. “She lived in a beautiful ivory tower—far, far above the mean cruel world.”

  Chapter 12

  “How is she?” Safia leans against the wall next to Sue’s door. She is exhausted, sick to her stomach and all too aware of the dark half moons beneath her eyes. She ignores the same shadows on Dr. Ackers face.

  “She woke up this morning panicked. She wanted her daughter, so we took her down to see Olivia about an hour ago. The girl was still asleep, thank god. I don’t know how the hell we’re supposed to handle this, Safia. I really don’t.”

  Safia’s head drops. She almost doesn’t have the energy to lift it back up. “We are all they have.” She raises her head slowly, finding Dr. Ackers eyes, her voice is stronger. “We are all they have.”

  He nods. “So, we do the best we can.” His attention focuses behind her and she turns to see the lawyer, Caden West, moving toward them with Dr. Brennan walking silently beside him.

  “The troops have arrived.”

  Sue is sitting on the edge of the bed when they walk in. She looks up and, finding Safia, lets the tears spill down her face.

  Safia sits down beside her and wraps both arms around her shoulders. “It’s okay. We’re going to get through this together. You’re not alone.”

  The others pull up chairs and wait. When Sue finally pulls away, Dr. Brennan offers her a box of Kleenex and an encouraging squeeze on the knee.

  “Sue, we know how much you’ve gone through already. You are a strong woman. Nothing has changed, right? Olivia is still your little girl, still doing great after the surgery. She still needs you to be strong for her.”

  “But my God, how can someone do this? Why?” her voice breaks. “How?”

  “We’re not sure why yet. How is surprisingly simple.” She hesitates. Safia glances at Sue, not sure she should hear the details. Her eyes are swollen to unrecognizable proportions and her mouth is slack. Dr. Brennan seems to be considering the same thing. “We’ll explain the details of that to you at a later time. What’s important is we know the ‘who.’ You’ve identified Dr. Vogler as the physician who implanted the embryos and we know that he is an important member of the animal rights group A.R.N.”

  “I met another member, a Dr. Mills, this weekend and she has confirmed their involvement. She said they wanted to blur the lines between humans and animals for something…I don’t know what exactly. Most likely to stop animal testing or change animal rights.”

  “They used my Olivia, my baby to do this? Why?”

  “It wasn’t personal. I’m assuming it was just timing. It was just an opportunistic crime.”

  “The good news,” Caden West clears his throat. “The good news is that it is a crime. While the U.S. has repeatedly rejected calls to actually ban chimeras, a law was passed one year before Olivia’s birth that made it illegal to actually place a non-human embryo in a human female or a human embryo into an animal. Punishable by ten years in prison.”

  Sue looks up and stares at him. Safia feels her begin to shake uncontrollably. “A non-human embryo?” Safia grabs her hand and holds it tight. “That’s what everyone is going to say about my child? Non-human?”

  “No, no, of course not,” Dr. Brennan interrupts. “Look, no one in this room has changed their opinion of Olivia, okay? We all know and we all still know she is the same little girl that she was before this information came to light. Everyone who meets Olivia loves her, right?”

  “Yes,” Sue nods, grabbing on to her words for dear life. “Everyone loves her.” She blows her nose and then lets her arms drop like lead weights. “But, oh my God. What if Bill knew? What if he knew and that’s why he tried to kill her?”

  “Let’s concentrate on the things that we do know, okay?”

  “Okay. So, has Dr. Vogler been arrested?”

  “I’ve notified the F.B.I.,” Caden West answers. “They are looking for him as we speak.”

  “Good. And the nurse—Shar. I think she knew, too. They can arrest her?”

  “As soon as you are strong enough, they want to get your statement. You can give them that information and anything else you might remember.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now, Sue,” Dr. Ackers says gently. “We’ve got something very important to discuss right now. Do you feel up to it?”

  “Okay.”

  “A.R.N. is going to put out their own statement tomorrow explaining their motivations for this…crime.” He let that sink in. Safia reaches behind her to pull the blanket around Sue’s shoulders. She’s still shaking, but at least she has stopped crying. “We need to hold a press conference before they do.”

  “Tell everyone about Olivia?” Her bottom lip trembles. />
  “Yes.”

  She shakes her head back and forth and turns to Safia, her face white. “I can’t do that. I just can’t.”

  “It seems impossible, I know, Sue.” Safia smoothes her short blonde hair down on her temple. “It’s what’s best for Olivia in the long run, though. The first thing they need to know about her is that she has a mother, a mother who loves her unconditionally. The public needs to identify with her as we do, personally just like they do with their own children and the children next door to them. Their first impression cannot be the word ‘chimera,’ it has to be daughter. Do you understand?”

  “This is important, Sue. You have to be strong. The initial reaction of the public is going to be shock, just like it was for us. Only they don’t know her like we do so they may also feel…” Dr. Brennan forces herself to be honest. “Disgust.”

  “Everyone, up until now, has pretty much been in agreement that this line should never be crossed. But now it has been. The full weight of the world’s judgment is going to fall squarely on Olivia’s shoulders. She is going to need you more than ever. Are you going to be there for her?”

  A long silence makes their shoulders slump collectively. She isn’t strong enough for this. Who could expect her to be?

  Her voice is thin—a woman lost in the cold—but it also holds a splinter of conviction that gives them hope. “Olivia was such a good baby. As she got older and her developmental problems started surfacing, I was really upset at first. This was my gift from God, me and Henry’s legacy. Why would he make that gift imperfect? I cried, I prayed, I fasted for days. I blamed myself at first. Maybe I shouldn’t have been foolin’ around with mother nature, trying all that science stuff. Maybe it was playing God. I was being punished. But then, all I had to do was look into those sweet eyes and I knew that I was wrong. She was perfect. My perfect gift. Sure, she was different, but I knew I didn’t love her any less for it.” She looks up, dabbing at the corners of her eyes with the Kleenex. “I was given this child for a reason. It doesn’t matter what label the world wants to put on her, what words they want to use to describe her…she is my daughter, my flesh and blood and I do love her unconditionally. As everyone that gets to know her does.”