Chapter 9 - THE FIRST DAUGHTER
Nora placed my mother on the operating table and lowered me onto a second gurney.
My father barricaded the doors.
Marcus checked his remaining ammunition.
Tyler lay restrained with electrical cord around his wrists.
He watched us with a calm smile.
“You can’t save both.”
Nora injected part of the reversal agent into my IV.
She saved the remainder for my mother.
My daughter’s heartbeat rose.
My mother’s did not.
The baby inside her was in distress.
“I need to perform a cesarean,” Nora said.
“On who?” Marcus asked.
“Both.”
There was no team.
No anesthesiologist.
No blood supply.
My father found surgical packs in a cabinet.
“I can assist.”
“You lost your license twenty years ago.”
“I still know anatomy.”
My mother gripped my hand.
“Save Emily first.”
“No.”
“Emily—”
“That baby is mine too.”
She began sobbing.
“I let them take your eggs.”
“Why?”
“They said they would kill you.”
“You still lied to me.”
“I know.”
A loud impact shook the doors.
Vance personnel were trying to enter.
Nora made the decision.
She began with me.
Pain, light, voices.
My body shook despite the anesthesia.
Then I heard crying.
High.
Furious.
Alive.
“My baby?”
Nora lifted a tiny girl above the surgical curtain.
“Alive.”
I broke.
For one second, everything disappeared except her voice.
Then my mother screamed.
Her fetal monitor flatlined.
Nora handed my daughter to my father and moved to the second surgery.
My mother’s blood pressure collapsed.
Marcus held the barricade as bullets punched through the door.
Tyler twisted against his restraints.
“You’re all going to die here.”
My father placed my baby against my chest.
She was warm.
Small.
Perfect.
Then Tyler looked at her face and stopped smiling.
“No.”
“What?”
“That isn’t Subject E-29B.”
My father examined the baby’s hospital tag.
The tag had been attached before birth.
It carried another woman’s name.
The embryo records had been switched.
My daughter was mine.
But she was not the child Vance wanted.
May you like
Tyler looked toward my mother’s operating table.
“The real Eve is inside Karen.”
