1.13 It... Could... Work!

Over the years, Lupe had become friends with the mayor, Lewis Alterman. He was a dapper old man who never married. He had been coming to dinner a couple times a month and Lupe could tell something was on her old friend's mind. He seemed preoccupied and their dinners seemed almost like a job interview.

“Where do you see yourself in five years?” asked Lewis

“Well I own my land, so probably here. Maybe I'll expand a bit, I don't know. I think I'm here for good though, I've been here for almost fifteen years now...”

“How is your research coming on? It's always so interesting to hear what our county's leading freelance scientist is up to!” If Lupe didn't know better, she'd have thought Lewis was flirting with her.

“Oh, stop! You'll make me blush! I've been duplicating the molecular structure of various minerals to see if there's a functional difference between lab based minerals and those that have been naturally formed. Then I bring samples of each to the Landgraab Center in town for correlation and analysis. I've also been doing horticultural experiments now that we've successfully mapped the plant genome and I've been able to splice different genes onto seeds to create new varieties of plants. There's huge commercial potential in that one... Oh and I've been cloning bugs again. You'd think that flooding the market with plasma bugs would cause a collapse in prices, but it hasn't and I'm gonna ride this bubble until it pops!” Lupe stopped talking to take a bite of spaghetti.

Lewis appeared thoughtful and then asked her, “How do you discipline your children? You're so good with them!”

“I don't really, unless they need it. I am kind, but firm and unyielding. Kids are mimics and mirrors and they show the world how they are treated. If they are treated kindly and courteously that is what they'll put out into the world.”

Lewis took this in and then let forth with this whammy, “What would you say your purpose is as a mother?”

Lupe thought for a little bit before answering taking a couple bites and drinking her water, “I think my job is to help them meet their potential and help guide them where they want to go. And to be a safe place to land when the world gets tough, I guess.”

These were interesting philosophical questions, but not ones that you necessarily the conversation one expected to be having with a bachelor of advancing age. She was concerned that this was a very formal courtship ritual. There had been rumors over the years linking him to various citizens, but nothing ever seemed to develop of it. He didn't seem very promiscuous and flirted outrageously with everyone. The gossip never got salacious and scandals never seemed to find their way to him. The man was like political teflon. Then he started asking her questions about her scientific research and specifically cloning. It all clicked into place, “You want me to clone you!?”

Lewis looked embarrassed, “My family line ends with me, Guadalupe. I never had the finer feelings needed to marry and I couldn't bear to put a child through a loveless marriage. I'd never be able to put a wife or family first. I love my career. I love Meadow Glenn!” he said with such passion in his voice that Lupe felt moved in spite of herself.

She listened to him continue feeling like she was in another room, “I would like a second chance. I hear you have cloned insects and fruit. The science center and the hospital won't do it. Not even for an endowment. They say it would be unethical to clone a human even if it is something I want.” He grabbed Lupe's hands and continued, impassioned, “Clone me, Lupe, give me a second chance! I am convinced that you could raise my clone to be a better version of myself. Someone for whom civic responsibility would not outweigh personal happiness. Someone who could achieve greatness without sacrificing their personal happiness! I would see to it that he was well taken care of.”

Lupe felt herself wavering in spite of herself, “I need to think about it.”

Lewis could afford to be magnanimous, “Please, take all the time that you need. I just ask that you keep this quiet.” He put on his hat, grabbed his umbrella and left.

Lupe's thoughts were spinning. She was happy with how things were now. She loved her girls and all the chaos they brought with them. Her family felt complete. At the same time, it was a very tempting offer. She had analyzed human DNA before and studied it in her lab. She'd sequenced her own DNA as well as both of her daughters'. She knew the theory behind cloning a human wouldn't be that different from cloning the plant and insect life she'd done before, but she'd like to try vertebrates before she jumped directly to people.

She scoured yard sales and picked up a 10 gallon fish tank. Then she spent some time fishing to stock the tank. She wanted to make sure she had a variety of fish on hand to mess around with. She took samples from her fish and studied them. Then she worked on cloning them. She sectioned off an area of the tank with fine mesh and put her fish fry in there to watch. Gradually she took them out to dissect as they hit different growth stages to make sure they were developing normally, cross checking with her books on aquatic morphology. Once she was satisfied that they were normal fish she celebrated by having a big fish dinner!

She thought she should move on to amphibians, reptiles, and avians next which meant a cat. She didn't have the time or inclination to go hunting down these creatures herself and a cat would bring them straight to her. So she took the girls to the local animal shelter to look at cats. Juniper pouted the whole time because she wanted another dog and Lupe said no. Finally, they agreed on a gray tabby they named Fish at Hazel's insistence. Lupe set about befriending Fish, winning his confidence, and teaching him to bring her prey alive. Fish took to it quite easily and soon Lupe had a steady stream of small animals to experiment on... as well as far more feathers and snake skins than she really had a use for.

Cloning and growing the frogs and toads were easy. She put the artificial eggs in the fish tank protected by mesh like she had with the fish fry. Observing their progress was fairly simple too. She could watch the tadpoles wriggling inside their capsules. Then she was able to watch them eat their way out and swim in their section of the tank. They seemed to be developing normally and at each milestone, she pulled out a specimen and dissected it, checking it against her books for abnormalities. There were none. Laypeople seemed to think that cloning was like making a xerox, but it was so complicated. Yes, Lupe could make a copy of a single cell, but to make a whole life-form!? The logistics were impossible! Lewis had no idea what he was asking of her.

Lupe decided to pay a call to Maru and talk to her about the facilities at the hospital and what their labs were capable of. Maru called in a few favors and invited her down to tour their artificial growth laboratory. As they walked down the hallways of the hospital, Maru told Lupe all about their advanced medicine initiatives.

“As you know, the proliferation of cloning technology has allowed for near infinite stem cells. When there isn't an immediate need, we can grow new organs for a patient, or even a new hand! There has been talk of the use of artificial wombs being used in Korea and Japan, but I can't imagine that the medical community would sanction that!”

“What do you think they'd need to be like? Hypothetically?” aske Lupe, knowing Maru loved thought experiments. Maru stopped walking momentarily, pondering, “Well they'd need to be pretty big, and flexible. They'd need to be kept at a steady temperature and it would be hard to administer nutrients. There's some controversy in the obstetrics community over whether movement of the womb is necessary, some say that it isn't and some say that it is. More important might be sounds, and being squeezed. We're coming up to the clean room now, I'll need you to scrub in and put on a clean suit before we proceed into the lab.”

Once they were scrubbed and suited up, Maru typed a code onto a keypad allowing them to enter the laboratory proper. Lupe stopped and stared down the hallway. On either side of her were rooms filled with equipment beyond her wildest dreams. In one room, they were growing a leg in a very large tank and it wasn't the only tank in that room! Another room Maru showed her was entirely devoted to kidneys. It took a month to grow a kidney and required a DNA sample to key the stem cells to. The leg was nearly complete, and had been growing for 3 months. Attaching the lab-grown limb was an experimental surgery, Maru explained and there had only been 3 successes in the entire world. However, they had a patient that was willing to try even after being told the risks and going over the procedure step by step and the orthopedics team was raring to go. Lab grown fingers had been done for a long time and midpoint arm and leg attachment surgeries had been gaining more and more acceptance. However, foot and hand regrowth and attachment had proven tricky and full limb regrowth and attachment was still very experimental. There had initially been great hope for valve replacements, but the time-frames were so short that they found it best to grow by tissue type rather than individually.

After they finished the tour, Lupe's mind was reeling with possibility! Naturally, she headed to the library to spend some quality time with Jstor, PubMed, and LexisNexus, looking up everything she could find about the tanks used to regrow limbs as well as anything tangentially important. She still hadn't decided whether she was going to do it, but she thought that it was possible to clone someone. While she was at it she started looking up artificial wombs using the keywords “Korea” and “Japan.” Surprisingly much of the research coming out about recreating the conditions inside the uterus were coming from places with a high rate of Cesarean births, like Brazil. However, doctors in Kyoto were the first to regrow a section of the brain for a patient who'd experienced a terrible accident. For the next few weeks, Lupe haunted the library from the moment the girls left for school until her alarm went off telling her to head home for dinner. Her stack of notes was getting alarming and the librarians were giving her looks and gossiping about her behind their hands.

Finally, she felt like she'd amassed enough information and set about constructing her womb. To test it out, she decided to try cloning a guinea pig. If it was successful, then she would tell Lewis “yes...” She refused to think of failing. It was talking to Leah that brought her back to earth.

“Why are you messing around with artificial wombs, when you could just implant the embryo like in invitro? No one would need to know it was a clone... It's just that you and Lewis had an affair and the baby looks startlingly like him. He's been coming over a few times a month, you've been seen at the bistro with him and at fundraising events... Honestly, Lu, he's overdue for a minor scandal.”

“I've had that thought, but I can't exactly implant the embryo in myself, and what the heck would I tell my OB?! 'Gee, Dr Pang, I'd really appreciate your help implanting this clone in my uterus at the end of the month?!”

“What about Maru? She's a nurse practitioner and licensed midwife. She delivered Guy and Joe.”

“I'm sure that would go against her medical ethics. If anyone were to find out she could lose her license!”

“If you've gotten this far in researching and you're leaning yes, talk to Lewis about it. I'm sure he knows who to talk to and what to say to move things along.” said Elliot, wisely.

After they left, Lupe got on the phone and asked Lewis to come over, she had things she wished to discuss with him. When he arrived for dinner, they chatted about the goings on in the town until the children had taken themselves off elsewhere. Lupe cleared her throat and put her suddenly sweaty hands in her lap, “I've been giving our conversation last month a lot of thought and I've been doing some research and I think it is possible and very doable, however I'm running into a few hiccups.” Lewis kept his face neutral, though Lupe thought she saw something flicker across his face, “I can extract your DNA from a sample and implant it into a stemcell to form a false zygote and grow that until it becomes a blastocyte under laboratory conditions, but after that, I'll need to implant it in something and sadly I do not have the technology to create an artificial womb within the time-frame required. I could, of course, implant it into a willing surrogate. Unfortunately, I lack a surrogate or the ability to implant it myself. We'd need a willing doctor with experience with invitro fertilization. I can't just walk into a clinic and say 'Doctor, would you please implant these embryos in my womb? I made them myself!'”

Lewis nodded and lowered his head in thought, “I see what you mean and I'll see what I can do to help you. Would you excuse me? I'd like to make a call.”

Lewis stepped out onto the back porch and called a good friend and campaign donor, “It's Lewis, she said she'd do it, if she could find a doctor who would implant her with the embryo.”

The person on the other end of the line replied, “You can't just show up at the doctor's with a home made embryo!”

“You and I both know about the skeletons in your closet, doctor, so either you do it, or you find someone who will do it. It's so hard to keep my end of the bargain...”

“Ok, ok I'll see what I can do, but she'll need to come in after hours.”

“But of course! I will let you know when it's ready.” said Lewis, ending the call and smiling without warmth. He knew that it wasn't really a second chance for him, but a do-over for the family. The last of a prestigious family, Lewis wore power like a cloak. People just did what he told them to and he had no qualms about issuing orders. He wasn't evil, he'd just put his heart away when he was a child and then couldn't find it again. He hoped things would be different for his clone. That he would get the kind of nurturing that nannies, tutors, and boarding school had never provided. He walked back into the kitchen to tell Lupe the good news.

Lupe had not heard the phone call on the porch. She was quite curious about it and was feeling tumultuous. The whole spectrum of human emotion battled for supremacy as she waited for Lewis to return. When he did, she didn't understand what he'd said at first, “Could you repeat that? I must've misheard you.”

“I said, I found someone who will perform the implantation. We can proceed.”

The cool, calm, and collected scientist took over, “May I take a DNA sample?” Lewis nodded

his assent after looking around to make sure there weren't any witnesses. He expected her to go get a cotton swab and some sort of cup, but she took out something that looked like a remote control. She hit a few buttons and then he felt a warm tingling pass over his body as she scanned him, somehow taking a sample and copying his DNA. He didn't know the exact science of it, but it didn't matter as long as it worked.

Lupe thanked him and the two chatted for a few more minutes before Lewis made an excuse and took his leave. Afterwards neither could remember what it was they said.

Lupe took off to her lab at a trot. When she got there, she set up her microscope and started getting supplies out of the deep freeze and the autoclave. Then she set to work delicately with the stem cells and the sample from her handheld analyzer, carefully creating the conditions whereby it would act like a zygote and begin forming a person. She prepared ten cloned embryos on the microtiter plate and set them in the incubator overnight. She wasn't expecting success and jotted that down in her notes, “I expect to come down here tomorrow morning and find embryos in various stages of development. I will be very surprised if any of them make it to blastulation” With that, she closed her notebook and started tidying up the lab. Then she did one last walk through of the house before bed to make sure nothing was out of place and the doors were all locked.

Then next morning, she was distracted and inwardly focused. She was humming with anticipation alternating with dread. After waving to the girls from the front porch, Lupe spotted Hazel's homework on the table and Junipers lunch on the counter. She shrugged and ran to the lab. She opened the incubator and pulled out the tray of embryos and began checking them under the microscope. In her notebook she jotted down,

Embryo	Stage	Status
A	A-zygote	Inactive
B	A-zygote	Inactive
C	2 cells!	Active
D	2 cells	Active
E	A-zygote	Inactive
F	A-zygote	Inactive
G	2 cells	Active
H	A-zygote	Inactive
I	2 cells	Active
J	A-zygote	Inactive

Lupe's hands were shaking as she put down her pen. She'd done it! The theory worked! Now she just needed to call Lewis and the doctor to bring him the embryos. She went to the kitchen and poured herself a cup of now cold coffee to steady her nerves and sat on the front porch drinking it. The sun filtered through the maple tree offering her a dancing dappled shade and the insects hummed their satisfaction with the world. The sights and sounds of nature soothed her spirits as they always had. She took out her phone and made the call, “Good morning, Lewis! I'm fine, how are you?” Lupe got up and paced the porch, leaning against the rail to check her hydrangeas. “Four have survived the night and made it to cleavage. I'm going to call the doctor and let him know but I thought you shold know.” Having deadheaded a couple of flower heads, Lupe now started looking over another bush. “Ok, I just thought you should know. I'll talk to you later; bye.”

She took out the card Lewis had handed her before leaving with a number scrawled on the back and checked her watch. It was 11:45, so she puttered around the house a bit before calling the number. The voice on the other end was gruff, “This is Nelson.”

“Yes, hi, this is Guadalupe Estes, Lewis told me to call you once the embryos were ready?”

Doctor Nelson coughed, “Already? That was quick!”

“I started with ten artificial zygotes, four have made it through the night and to the two cell stage.”

“Good ratio, I can take things from here. Come tonight at seven with the embryos and I will mature them from here. If they can make it to five days, we'll have a better chance at a live birth. Where are you in your cycle?”

“I should menstruate in about two to two and a half weeks.”

“Perfect!” his voice glowed with approval.“See you tonight, my office is...” he rattled off the location in the out-patient wing of the hospital. Lupe jotted it down in her lab notes, then she checked her phone's calendar. Tonight Hazel went to Shane for their overnight and Juniper should be ok by herself with the animals while Lupe ran an errand.

That afternoon, Lupe prepared the small cooler to hold the embryos by pouring boiling water inside, letting it sit for two minutes and pouring it out again. This achieved two goals, sanitizing the inside and warming it up. When Shane came to pick up Hazel, he noticed that Lupe was agitated, but chalked it up to Floyd's health problems. As soon as he was out of the driveway, Lupe called out to Juniper, “I gotta run a few errands. Will you be ok here with Floyd and Fish for company?” Juniper barely looked up from her assigned reading, “I'll be fine, Mom. Floyd will protect me.”

Lupe grabbed the cooler and headed off to the hospital. She felt self-conscious carrying the cooler through the dimly lit halls of the out-patient wing, worrying about what she'd say if she ran into Maru or her husband Harvey. They worked in the main building and it would be unlikely for them to be here, but she still ran over it in her head. When she got to the door emblazoned with “Meadow Glen Fertility Center,” she pushed it open and entered the empty waiting room. The door at the end to the exam rooms opened to reveal a small, irritated bald man, “Ms Estes?” Lupe nodded, he indicated the cooler, “That them?” Lupe nodded again.

He held the door open and gestured for her to follow him, and lead her to a lab. Once there, he opened the cooler and pulled out the tray and checking them under his microscope while clucking his tongue. Finally he looked up and indicated that she could look. As Lupe looked through the scope, checking over her embryos her heart began to beat faster. Only three embryos had remained inactive! Dr Nelson gave Lupe a nod of respect before saying, “We'll keep an eye on them here. I'll have my receptionist call you in the morning to set up an appointment for Monday morning. I'll select the best looking three to implant with the aim of one making it to live birth. I can already tell that these are excellent quality. Good work!”

Lupe watched as Dr Nelson tranferred her embryos to a different tray and put a label on it with her name, and date of birth as well as Lewis' before he put them away. Lupe found herself walking down the hallway with an empty tray. Before returning home, she stopped at the pharmacy to pick up more of Floyd's vitamins and the supermarket to pick up more milk and bread since they were running low. When she got home, Juniper was just where she'd left her reading on the couch with the dog resting at her side.

Saturday night they were all hanging around the house when Floyd jumped down from his bed and started howling. Lupe ran in from the garden and Juniper ran down from where she was painting as the little dog fell over. Hazel put her pretend car into park before getting up to see what was going on. Somehow they all knew that the little dog was gone. It seemed like a dark shadow had fallen over them and they cried together for the little soul who had crossed the veil. They spent Sunday together remembering Floyd and laid him to rest under a tree in the side yard.

Monday came and Lupe rushed the girls onto the bus as they groused and complained that they couldn't possibly go to school as distressed as they were. Somehow this argument was unconvincing to their mother who was just as distressed as they were, but had things to do.

Lupe and Lewis sat together in the waiting room of the fertility clinic making a pretense of reading while they waited. Lewis hadn't turned moved his newspaper in at least five minutes and Lupe was apparently studying an ad for a digestive aid intently. Finally they were called back by a cheerful, chattering nurse. She gave Lupe a blanket and directed her to strip from the waist down and have a seat on the table with the blanket over her lap. Lewis turned his back to allow her some privacy and turned back around when she said it was ok. He took a seat in the chair next to her shoulder and took her hand and tried to look supportive. Lupe started laughing and explained, “Leah said you were overdue for a little scandal and here we are getting me pregnant!” Lewis seemed struck by that.

He honestly hadn't been thinking about the optics of this decision, he'd always been careful not to give any one person more attention than any other. He'd been with his share of men and women and never loved any of them, though he felt a certain tenderness towards all his lovers. When his sister was still in town she had acted as his hostess for events, now he either planned them himself or had his assistant plan them. As society had gotten less rigid there was very little that he couldn't do for himself. However he'd been paying a very marked attention to Lupe for the past few years as he courted her friendship and then ascertained her suitability towards the cloning project. He supposed that their names must be getting linked in gossip and now to show up here with her? It probably looked better than for her to get pregnant and then have a little boy running around who looked just like him in nine or ten months. They'd never been bed partners, and his desires seldom ran in that direction now.

Before he had time to really begin ruminating, there was a knock on the door and Dr Nelson admitted himself followed by a nurse with a cart covered in supplies. They made pleasant small talk as the doctor directed Lupe to put her feet in the stirrups and he gave her various drugs to do different things that Lewis didn't want to understand before he took something that looked like a giant eyedropper under the blanket. With that he sat up removed his visor and mask to tell them, “Everything went beautifully! We've implanted the three best embryos and we'll followup in a few days. If all goes well, you'll be parents by Easter! Congratulations, Mom and Dad!” He reached out and shook their hands before turning and leaving with the beaming nurse close behind them.

Lupe got dressed feeling a bit sore and weird. Lewis offered to take her out for a coffee and pastry since he'd cleared his morning and Lupe agreed. She was worried that she'd made a mistake by pointing out that they'd now been seen in the fertility center and people might talk. At the coffeeshop, Lupe ordered a mint tea and a lemon poppy seed muffin while Lewis got an espresso and a biscotti. “You made a good point at the clinic, today. Let's give them something to talk about.” Lewis smiled roguishly and laid out a plan for Lupe to increase her societal involvement and Lewis to play the besotted attentive father.

Two weeks later, Lupe was back at Dr Nelson's to confirm pregnancy. A few days after that she had some bleeding and came back. It was then confirmed that she had lost two of the embryos but had retained one. They monitored her closely for the next few weeks and at twelve weeks, discharged her to her regular OB/GYN.

Author's Note: Pretty sure Google thinks I'm experiencing secondary infertility. Calm down, Google, you're worse than my mother! I