Inheritance: The perfect child is now possible, page 18
*
Come March, a string of hot, dry days drove the fire-danger level up to extreme, and a rash of grassfires broke out around Melbourne’s edges. They consumed fields, vapourised leaves and turned tree trunks black. Emily listened to the news with her hand pressed protectively to her enormous, round belly. The flames licked the suburbs and turned the sky a maudlin orange. The air became hard to breathe and people were advised to stay indoors. When Emily looked out her window to the street below, it was like looking through gauze. She reassured herself that she had made the right decision to give her baby girl better lungs, bigger muscles and an all-round stronger constitution.
On the fourth day of the orange haze, Emily was jolted awake by a sharp pull and a confident amphibian kick deep inside her. ‘Oh.’ She put her hand to her stomach and began to tingle all over.
She hauled herself up. For months, it had seemed she had been waiting forever to meet her little girl, and now it was happening, she didn’t feel ready. She dialled the maternity ward and then grabbed her hospital bag, her phone pinned to her ear as she waited for the call to connect.
The receptionist who answered was unhelpful. ‘If you think you’re in labour, it’s too early to come in.’
‘I understand that, but I really do think—’
‘There’s that word “think” again. Ring back when you know.’ The call disconnected.
Emily rang Rachel and relayed the conversation.
‘What the hell would she know from a ten-second conversation?’ Rachel fumed, indignant. ‘We’re going to the hospital, and if the woman on reception wants to argue she can answer to me. Health department executive.’
‘I’ll meet you out the front,’ Emily said.
Rachel lived ten minutes away, but she arrived in six and helped Emily into the car. It was 8 am and they hit peak-hour traffic on Nicholson Street.
‘I always picture babies arriving dramatically in the middle of the night,’ Rachel said as they waited at the zebra crossing while pedestrians in grey city suits filed across the intersection.
Emily was sucking air in between her teeth as a contraction seized her.
The light turned green, but there were still people on the road. Rachel honked her horn. ‘C’mon, c’mon, move it!’ She shooed the workers like they were cattle. ‘Baby on board!’
When they reached the hospital, Emily’s contractions were close together. Rachel parked and helped Emily to the admissions desk. The receptionist looked annoyed. ‘You were supposed to call ahead.’
‘We tried!’ Rachel snapped.
‘It’s okay, Rach.’ Emily touched her friend’s arm, then smiled at the lady as sweetly as she could manage. ‘What should we do?’
‘Fill this out.’ The nurse thrust a tablet at Rachel. She waved at an orderly, who brought over a wheelchair for Emily. As she sat, Emily was seized by pain. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to focus on her breathing. When the pain ceased, and she opened her eyes, her gaze fell on something she hadn’t noticed before. The nurse wore a shiny badge pinned to her lapel, like one a child might get with a birthday card. Five today! Only this one was a lemony shade with a slogan that made Emily queasy with dread: Keep Australia Pure.
The nurse came up behind Emily and took hold of the handles of her wheelchair. She was about to roll her away when Emily called out. ‘Rachel!’ She grabbed Rachel’s sleeve and pulled her close. ‘On the form, don’t tell them the baby is modified,’ she whispered.
‘Don’t they need to know that?’
‘It’s better if they don’t.’
Rachel nodded. ‘I’ll be with you as soon as I’ve finished the paperwork.’
*
Once Emily was admitted, her baby performed the way Dr Osmond intended: speedily. The contractions came in rapid waves, and Emily felt like she was on a runaway rollercoaster. Then suddenly, everything changed.
‘We’re going to have to do a caesar,’ the doctor said. A medical team rushed in. A sheet was raised. ‘What’s happening?’ Emily asked.
She could smell burning. She closed her eyes and wished Dougal was with her. A choked sob escaped her lips. She felt a tug. Then heard a cry.
The baby girl was placed on Emily’s chest, screaming her heart out. She could see signs of Dougal in her eyes and her chin. Even her little ears, like two perfect seashells, had the same compact, rounded shape she recognised from her husband.
Emily touched her lips to the baby’s forehead trying to convey that she was safe.
‘Hello, little one,’ she whispered.
Mother and daughter only had a few moments together before a pair of arms whisked the new arrival away to be cleaned up and checked and then placed in a clear plastic box with a white card that read: Baby Monahan. A new nurse wheeled the bassinet over to Emily’s bedside, grinning.
‘She sure has some lungs on her,’ she said.
*
Adelaide Elizabeth Tabatha Monahan was a restless baby, with Herculean stamina. She could cry and cry and cry, with an urgent, desperate pitch that made Emily fret she’d hurt herself. She almost never slept.
As Emily paced her flat, her overwrought bundle in her arms, she worried. Her primary concern was that she had been allowed to just take this baby home, without supervision or some sort of two-day intensive training module. Like a million mothers before her, she had expected some internal hard drive to kick into gear once she held her baby in her arms. But baby Adelaide wanted only to scream and Emily had no idea how to dissuade her. She would sit in the rocking chair Tabatha had brought from the farm, holding Adelaide against her chest, and try to sound positive and confident as she promised the squalling bundle that everything would be all right.
When the maternal child health nurse arrived at the flat in teddy-bear scrubs, she took a hand-held baby scale from her bag and looped its hook through Adelaide’s muslin wrap then lifted her up, her little pink toes poking out through one of the gaps in the fabric.
‘She’s fattening up,’ the nurse said approvingly.
‘Mealtime is the only time she stops crying,’ Emily said.
‘And how are you?’
Emily shook her head, her eyes prickling with tears, as the loneliness and sleeplessness rushed over her. ‘She won’t sleep. I can’t sleep. I’m worried there’s something wrong.’
For the first time since she’d brought Adelaide home, Emily had got out of her pyjamas and into a soft pair of jeans, a crushed shirt and Dougal’s Richmond cap to hide her unwashed mop of blonde hair.
‘Are you getting three square meals?’ the nurse asked. Emily’s baby weight was melting rapidly away.
‘I eat when I can, which isn’t often. She just cries and cries and cries,’ she said. ‘I’m worried she’s sick, or in pain.’
‘Oh now.’ The nurse picked up Adelaide, who had chosen this brief window to rest her lungs. She looked up innocently at the nurse. ‘That’s what babies do.’
‘It’s so relentless, it seems out of the ordinary.’
The nurse handed baby Adelaide back to Emily. ‘Every mother of a fussy baby says that. I assure you, it is terribly, terribly ordinary.’
*
Raising tiny, genetically optimised Adelaide alone was harder than Emily could ever have imagined. Adelaide had even less need for sleep than a normal infant. Emily remembered telling Dougal blithely that ‘it would be tough for a few years’ like it was nothing. She wanted to strangle that naive woman. On the phone to Rachel one day, she wondered wryly if the guards at Guantanamo had ever considered using screaming newborns as a means of getting spies to give up state secrets.
‘Perhaps you could loan her to ASIO,’ Rachel said.
‘I could get some rest while they used her to break terrorists and traitors.’
‘Australia would become a superpower overnight. This just in: Australia has harnessed a secret weapon to take over the world. In her first act of unilateral domination, the prime minister declared a month of mandatory sleep.’
Emily chuckled. ‘Only a month?’
‘I’ll come over on Saturday and sit with her while you get some rest.’
‘Thank you. I don’t think I’ve washed my hair since she was born. Or maybe I have. I can’t remember.’
Somehow, Emily sleepwalked through the newborn phase. By the time Adelaide was five months old, she was less fractious and by eighteen months, her sleep became more consistent. Adelaide began to regularly sleep for blocks of two, then three hours, and eventually, four hours together from about midnight to 4 am. Emily learned to get by on less sleep.
Despite these improvements, Adelaide would still be overcome with screaming fits. Propped up in her highchair, she would knock everything off the tray like a tiny, pink-faced Godzilla, screaming and swinging her hands and legs, inconsolable. Emily would dart towards her, worried she was going to topple her highchair, but if she got too close, her baby would grab at her with her tiny furious little fists and pull her hair, tears gushing.
Whenever Emily would take Adelaide to see Dr Gupta, the GP always said the same thing: ‘She’s a perfectly healthy child.’ Emily begged Dr Gupta to run a few tests, but nothing nefarious showed up.
‘Come up here and get some country air,’ Tabatha said during one of her twice-weekly phone calls with Emily. ‘I’ll keep Adelaide in my room. You can take the guest bedroom and get some sleep. I’m an early bird anyway. She can pat a horse, play with the lambs. The fresh air will make all the difference, you’ll see.’
‘Are you sure? She’s a lot of take.’
‘Of course I’m sure. I can think of nothing I’d like more than to see my two favourite girls.’
Emily pictured speckled eggs in a ceramic bowl on a blue gingham tablecloth, fresh cream and Tabatha’s famous homemade ginger cake. ‘Okay. We’d love to come.’
The following weekend, Emily and Adelaide caught a V/Line train up to Shepparton. Emily had feared that if she drove on uninterrupted highway for eight hours on almost no sleep, she’d plough them both into a tree. She could see the concern on the faces of her fellow passengers as she shuffled down the aisle to her seat with an infant in tow. But fortunately, Adelaide loved the train. The rocking motion placated her, and as her eyes alighted on the scenery spinning past their window – fields of yellow canola and orderly vineyards – her little red mouth popped open at the new and puzzling sights. She grizzled here and there but mostly the trip was a success. Tabatha met Emily and Adelaide at Shepparton Station in her ute, and soon she was showing them into the farmhouse. Having exhausted her capacity for good behaviour, Adelaide promptly burst into tears. For the next six hours, she cried without end.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Emily said as Tabatha tried to quieten her.
‘Is she like this every night?’ Tabatha asked as she rocked her.
‘Every single night. Since she was born.’
They tried to get her into her travel cot, but Adelaide refused to be caged, writhing, straightening her legs and pushing back off the frame, then crying harder.
‘Do you think she’s unwell?’ Tabatha asked.
‘That’s what I’m always asking myself. The doctors say she’s just fussy. They can’t find anything wrong with her but … she seems distressed, doesn’t she?’ She picked up her daughter and tried to read her face. Adelaide squirmed in her arms. ‘I wish you could tell us what was wrong.’
‘Why don’t we take her into Dr Portelli in town?’ Tabatha said. ‘I’ve been seeing him for thirty years. He must have treated every ailment under the sun. He might have some answers.’
Emily figured there was nothing to lose, so they piled into the ute and drove into Shepparton.
The country doctor was genial and thorough. He looked in Adelaide’s ears, eyes and throat, and tested her reflexes. Finally, he took off his glasses and asked, ‘Did she undergo any CRISPR edits?’
Emily straightened in her chair. She wasn’t comfortable talking about her daughter’s genetic status with strangers. Even doctors. Despite the general air of GM acceptance, her run-ins with the Pure Movement had put her on her guard. There were daily articles about impressive feats being achieved by these shiny new humans, but the moment felt precarious. Emily had seen the unfettered Pure Movement hatred up close. Her leg still bore the shiny white scar from the pit bull’s bite. She knew what they were capable of. She shook her head. No.
‘Funny thing about these edits,’ the doctor mused. ‘A clinic opened in Shepparton a few years ago. There was a rush to sign up for an appointment, but it always concerned me how quickly it all became available.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just what I said. It seemed too fast.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘I bought one of those new hi-tech, solar-electric cars earlier this year. Only problem is, they hadn’t thought it all the way through. Oh, they did product testing. I’m sure they thought it was fine. But once they get out on the road, glitches started to appear.’
‘What kind of glitches?’
‘At first it was just little things. Lights flickered. The windows wouldn’t open. I took it to my mechanic. He said it wasn’t a matter of simply replacing a lightbulb. The issue was with the computing system. The manufacturer rushed it out.’
‘You think modified babies are lemons?’
‘I’m not saying that. I’m just reflecting on the nature of human enterprise.’
‘So, you think they rushed out the GM edits?’
The doctor wobbled his head from side to side, weighing up how to answer the question. ‘There’s been a bit of chatter about modified babies being more prone to certain ailments. Often, the cause is hard to pinpoint. There’s no diagnosis. It’s just a raft of symptoms with no apparent root cause.’
‘Where is this chatter?’
‘There was a small study in the Australian Journal of Medicine. A few practitioners responded, saying they’d noticed a high rate of unexplained complaints among small children who had undergone edits.’
‘When was this?’
‘I think it was around April.’
Emily made a mental note, then addressed the reason she was there. ‘That’s very distressing for parents of GM children, but what do you think is causing my baby to howl so mercilessly?’
The doctor furrowed his brow. ‘I can’t find anything medically wrong with her. There’s a little rash on her tummy. Try some lanolin. Other than that, I’m afraid there’s not much to be done.’ He leaned down close to Adelaide, and cooed, ‘You’re just a little grizzly bear, aren’t you?’ He faced Emily again. ‘Our second born was the same. It’s tough, but they do grow out of it.’ He printed out a script and handed it to Emily with a grandfatherly smile. ‘That might help. You, not her.’
The text read: Prozac.
‘Right, thank you,’ Emily said, standing. ‘I’ll try the lanolin.’ Before she left, she turned and asked, ‘What did you do with the car?’
‘I sold it and went back to driving my trusty old Ford.’
16
Adelaide
After Adelaide asked her mother to collect her, she had an eighty-minute wait while Emily drove from her beachside home to the inner-city hospital. Emily’s new house, as Adelaide still called it after eight years, featured high ceilings, bare white walls inside and out, and roof angles to maximise energy efficiency. Adelaide thought it was like living inside a carton of milk and was further put off by how different it was to the homey flat she had been raised in, with its ornate cornices and old, heavy furniture. She’d only visited her mother a handful of times.
She watched the red, hydrogen-powered car approach the hospital pick-up point. Emily parked and got out of the car. Her mandated PPE swished as she hurried towards Adelaide and wrapped her arms around her.
‘I’m so glad you called me,’ Emily said, her voice muffled by the protective gear.
Adelaide freed herself from the embrace, saying, ‘It’s okay. It’s not what you think. I’m fine.’
‘Then why—?’
Adelaide stiffened, bristling at her mother’s need to know. ‘It’s classified,’ she said.
‘Classified?’ Emily searched Adelaide’s face, her expression wounded.
Adelaide sighed. ‘There was a potential new variant at the office. That’s why you have to wear the PPE.’
‘Oh, that’s a relief.’
‘A relief?’
‘I just …’ Emily reached a gloved hand tentatively towards her daughter, and then pulled it back. ‘I’d hate to think you’d been through another loss.’
‘No, nothing like that. We’d better get going. I’m supposed to isolate.’
Emily knew only the bare details of the recent miscarriages. Adelaide did not confide in her anymore. The news of the most recent loss had been reported as if Adelaide was the gas company phoning about an unpaid bill. The intimacy of the days when Adelaide was little was gone. Back then, Emily was the enforcer of rules. ‘No TV until you’ve finished your green beans.’ But she was also co-conspirator in the breaking of those rules. ‘Let’s have French toast and ice cream for dinner since you’re not feeling well.’
Until the schism. Emily often told Adelaide she had no idea where Adelaide got her capacity for holding a grudge. ‘Certainly not your father.’
‘Well, you and my father weren’t the only two involved in my creation, so who knows?’ Adelaide would reply tartly, ending the conversation.
Now, Emily’s sleek HydroXC8 carved noiselessly through the streets towards Fawkner Towers.
Emily chattered about how she was sure JJ had everything under control, how proud she was of Adelaide, and how long it had been since they’d all been together. ‘Are you working on anything interesting right now?’
‘The usual government health battles.’
