Ava, p.15
Ava, page 15
The timing was right—women were desperate for change. Women’s rights groups were successfully smuggling oral contraceptives, Plan B, misoprostol, and mifepristone from Canada, Mexico, and Europe, but they usually only got into the hands of the wealthy and the privileged. If you were poor and pregnant, your options were limited, and rumors of back-alley abortions were becoming commonplace once again.
James Jr. asked his father how to get his scientific breakthrough into the hands of the general public and how to convince them it would work. First, he would need to show the world what the in vitro technique had achieved. At the same time, he needed to protect Larkin and Ava’s identities.
“Now is not the time,” James said. “I’m still playing the long game, Pops.” He chuckled to himself—his dad had drifted off to sleep again while he was talking.
Suddenly, the door opened and a little boy ran into the room, hurtling himself toward James Sr.’s legs and hugging them. “Grandpa! Grandpa! Happy birthday!” Jameson squealed. James Sr. woke up as Jameson clambered into his lap and hugged him around his neck.
Aubrey walked in a few steps behind him. “I am so sorry we’re late,” she said to James Jr. “One of the other docs had a family emergency, so I had to cover his call for a few extra hours.”
“We’re just glad you were able to make it,” James Jr. replied.
“Hi, Mr. Davis, and happy birthday,” Aubrey said as she squeezed his hand. Jameson was covering his grandfather’s head in kisses. James Jr. was thankful his son had already gotten his flu and COVID shots as he watched Jameson smother James Sr. with potential fomites of adoration.
Aubrey sat in the chair next to Jameson’s grandfather.
“Welcome, welcome to you both. So good to see you,” he said as Jameson finally settled in his lap.
James Jr. knew his father didn’t really understand who Aubrey was; his father often thought she was a nursing home employee or a random visitor. James Jr. would gently correct him by saying she was a good friend and Jameson’s mom, but his dad would forget by the next time he saw her. Aubrey told James Jr. it didn’t bother her—she was happy he was able to have a relationship with his only grandchild. He was also the only grandparent Jameson knew.
After Ava was born and Larkin had offered to be Aubrey’s surrogate, Aubrey had called Dr. Davis and requested that they meet to discuss altering her eggs as they had done with Larkin’s. They met in his office, which was still as cluttered as it had been when Larkin first started working there over ten years ago.
“So, Dr. Abrams, you want to be a part of this experiment?” Dr. Davis asked.
“Please call me Aubrey.”
“And please call me James.”
“Thank you, James. You know I already have been a part of this, very intimately, with my best friend. Now I’d like to be involved on a more personal level.”
“If you’re certain, I would be happy to oblige.”
“Yes. I’m certain. Absolutely. But there’s more that I hope you’ll oblige.”
“Yes?”
“I would like you to be the donor . . . but also the father,” Aubrey said. She quickly added, “There would be no financial obligation. And you would make the ‘donation,’ so to speak, just as Spencer had for Larkin. I would want you to be involved with our child as much or as little as you would like.”
“Why me?” he inquired.
“I have been looking at hundreds of bios for potential sperm donors. I’ve been looking for someone intelligent with a kind heart and calm temperament. No matter how much I read, I can’t really know any of them.” She hesitated. “I feel we’ve had a unique perspective on getting to know each other over the last couple of years, more than any online profiles could reveal.”
“This is quite true,” James Davis Jr. said, then sat back in his chair. He’d dedicated his life to his research. He had been singularly focused on that and nothing more. He had little time for hobbies, vacations, or relationships. He was now fifty-nine years old, and he had achieved a major milestone in his promise to his mother and his father. Now, he could be a part of his own research and be a father as well.
He saw his parents’ wedding photo on the shelf behind Aubrey. They had gotten pregnant when they were in their early thirties and had anticipated having decades to raise their son together. In reality, his mother had only had three weeks.
With a wistful smile, he replied, “It would be an honor.”
CHAPTER 26
When the middle school bus stopped in front of her home, Ava noticed her mother’s car in the driveway. She jumped off the bus and ran to the front door. “Mom! Mom! Are you home?” she called as she dropped her backpack inside and kicked off her sneakers.
“Hey! I’m here. What’s up? Big day at school?” Larkin asked from the kitchen. She had come home from work early when a shipment of lab supplies had been delayed.
“It’s about my friend Lorna. Is Dad here?”
“He’s in his office working. Want me to get him?” Larkin started walking toward his office.
“No!” Ava replied emphatically. “I don’t want him to know. It’s girl stuff.”
“Okay. Sure.”
Ava led her mom to the couch and sat down next to her with a serious expression on her face. Ava moved her long hair out of her face and tucked several strands behind her ears and began to rattle off what had happened at school. “Lorna got up in math class today to do a problem on the board and she had blood on the back of her pants. The teacher noticed right away and took her to the office to call her mom. She told the class she thought Lorna didn’t look well. I don’t think anybody else noticed what happened. Her mom brought her some more clothes, and I saw her again at lunch. She told me she started her period.”
“Oh . . . is Lorna okay?” Larkin asked when Ava took a breath.
“Yes. She doesn’t think anyone really noticed either. Her mom packed supplies in her backpack, but Lorna said she had no idea she was going to start.”
“Well, I’m glad no one noticed.”
“I don’t want that to happen to me at school. Do you know when I might start? Is there a way to tell? Lorna’s not even twelve yet! You said you didn’t start until you were almost thirteen.”
“Most girls take after their mothers, so you shouldn’t need to worry about that happening soon.”
“Oh, good! I just don’t want to be surprised like Lorna.” Ava paused. “Why are you looking at me so weird like that?” Ava asked as she noticed her mother’s furrowed brow.
“Ava,” Larkin said. “I don’t think you’re going to need to worry about what happened to Lorna happening to you. Remember how your dad and I told you how you were made unique? That you’re special?”
“Yeah, but all parents say that.” She rolled her eyes.
“You really were made different, Ava. Outside, you look like every other little girl your age, but inside, you’re different. We think that when you get older, you won’t have any periods.”
“Why wouldn’t I have a period? Doesn’t having periods mean that I can have babies later if I want to? Are you saying I can’t have babies?”
“You should still be able to have babies, honey,” Larkin tried to reassure her. “But I think we need to go and talk to Aubrey. She can help with a lot of your questions.”
A few days later, Larkin brought Ava to Aubrey’s office at the end of her workday. They sat in her office as she finished with her last patient in an exam room. On her desk was a plastic model of a female human pelvis. It showed a cross section of a uterus with a full-term baby inside. Ava thought it was odd that the baby was upside down. When she hung upside down for too long from the monkey bars at school, it always made her head feel funny. She removed the baby from the uterus and tried to turn it the other way, but it wouldn’t fit.
“Was Maeve upside down inside you?” Ava asked Larkin.
“Yes, and you and Jameson were as well.”
“Did it hurt Maeve’s head when she came out?” Ava asked as she rubbed the top of the plastic baby’s head.
“No, honey. It didn’t hurt her.”
“And how long was she alive?”
“Just a few hours.”
“That’s so sad,” Ava said as she put the baby back into the model on the desk.
“It was, and it still is.”
“Were you scared I would be born like Maeve?”
“Very, very scared. I didn’t think I wanted to have another baby for a long time, but I’m so glad I changed my mind. Your dad is, too.”
“Hey, guys!” Aubrey said as she walked into her office. She hugged Larkin and Ava and then took a seat. “So, Ava, do you know why you are here today?”
Ava told Aubrey about her friend starting her period. She also said her mother had told her she might not menstruate, but she didn’t understand why. Larkin then explained—in the best way she could to an eleven-year-old—that when Ava was just a tiny egg, before she was even Ava, a procedure had been done to change how she might have a baby when she grew up. Today was the day they would see if the procedure had worked. Aubrey would perform an ultrasound to take a look.
Aubrey had another plastic model on her desk—a uterus with two ovaries. It looked like the picture Dr. Mills had drawn on the exam table paper years ago when she’d explained female anatomy to Larkin. She showed the model to Ava. “So, women have a uterus that looks like this,” she said. “These two round things are where the little eggs are made. If a woman gets pregnant, the baby grows inside the uterus for about nine months and then she has the baby. But you should be different. Let’s go and see, okay?”
Aubrey and Larkin took Ava into an exam room and had her lie down. “I promise this isn’t going to hurt,” Aubrey said. “It just helps me to see inside your belly.” As she maneuvered the ultrasound transducer across Ava’s lower abdomen, Aubrey could see a long, tubular structure where the uterus would normally be and a single ovary, just like an avian species would have. The tubular structure appeared to be an oviduct. She pointed it out to Larkin, and they nodded to each other and smiled. It had worked.
“All is well, Ava,” Aubrey told her. “You are healthy, but you shouldn’t have periods like other girls.”
Ava was confused but relieved. After her friend had started her period at school, Ava was happy to know she wouldn’t have to worry about that happening to her. She sat up after Aubrey wiped the gel off her. She didn’t have any other questions for Aubrey and was ready to go home.
“Do you want to know how you might have a baby, Ava? If you decide someday that you want a baby?” Larkin asked.
“I guess so,” Ava replied with a shrug.
“So,” Larkin started to explain. She took a deep breath. “You should be able to make an egg like your Silkies. And then your baby would grow inside the egg, like a chick, instead of growing inside of you.”
Ava laughed at the idea and shook her head. “Stop teasing me! That’s silly, Mom. Babies grow in bellies.”
“I’m serious, Ava.”
Ava paused as she realized her mother wasn’t teasing her. “That’s just really weird,” Ava said flatly.
“Someday, lots of other women may be able to do the same thing. You wouldn’t be the only one. You would just be the first. But that’s a long time from now. And you know how the chickens can’t make eggs without a lot of sunlight?”
“Yes?”
“We should start having you keep sunglasses on when you’re outside for a long time, okay?”
“Why?”
“Because if you don’t, you could start producing eggs now that you’re getting closer to puberty. You won’t have to wear sunglasses every time you’re outside—only if you’re out for hours at a time in bright light.”
Ava looked at Larkin and Aubrey with her head cocked to the side. They weren’t playing a trick on her. This was real.
“I know this is a lot to be telling you today, but it’s important for you to know. We can always talk more about this anytime you want to, I promise,” Larkin said with sincerity.
The relief she felt from learning she wouldn’t have a period was short-lived as Ava tried to absorb the information her mother had just told her. She decided she didn’t ever want to have a baby. Ever.
CHAPTER 27
The pineal gland, located behind a chicken’s eyes, is sometimes referred to as the “third eye” of the hen. When stimulated by sunlight in the orange and red spectrum, this gland sends hormone signals to the ovary to stimulate egg production.
—eggedon.com
Ava set her soccer bag next to her locker in the training room. Her sophomore year of high school would start the following week, and she was excited to have made the varsity team. She would be playing in the right forward position. Her team had been meeting early in the morning to avoid the hottest hours of brutal August sun, but at least the humidity was blissfully low today. They would continue their strength and conditioning program and practice drills. At the end of the day, they would have their first friendly scrimmage of the season against another local high school team.
She laced up her grass-stained cleats, with dried mud on the soles, as she sat on the long wooden bench. Some of the other girls were practicing their foot skills as she got ready. When her friend Jordan tried to kick a ball back to a teammate, she slipped and landed on Ava’s backpack. Ava heard a crack as Jordan fell, and they both winced at the noise.
“Oh, I don’t know what that was, Ava, but I’m so sorry!” Jordan said as she hastily got up.
Ava unzipped her backpack and pulled out her sport sunglasses. They were now mangled, and both lenses were cracked. She had forgotten to put them back in their case after the last practice. Her teammates knew she had a sensitivity to sunlight and always needed to wear them.
“Oh, no! I’ll buy you a new pair, okay?” Jordan promised.
“It’s really fine. I have a couple of spares at home.” Ava didn’t have a spare pair with her, though. For the past few years, she had been resolute about always wearing her sunglasses when she was outside, as her parents unfailingly reminded her to do. But she couldn’t go home to get another pair—she wasn’t able to drive yet—and her mom and dad weren’t at home to bring her an extra pair. If she sat out of practice, the coach would make her run extra laps the next day. She decided that just one day without her sunglasses wouldn’t matter.
Her team headed out to the field to work out in the early morning sun. They did sprints, lateral lunges, and single-leg squats. They took frequent water breaks, at least once every thirty minutes, as the temperature was already creeping toward ninety and it was only nine o’clock. After their trainer told them they were done for the morning, Ava practiced corner kicks and shooting on goal with Jordan helping her. Then she and several others helped the coach touch up the painted lines on the field.
One of the older girls who could drive later drove them to a restaurant, where they ate lunch. They hung out in the outdoor patio area, talking about the rival team, before heading back for the late afternoon scrimmage. Ava was squinting in the afternoon sun as they talked, and she tried to shade her eyes with her hand.
Her mom picked her up after the scrimmage was over as the sun was starting to go down. Ava excitedly mentioned that she had scored one goal and had two assists. She was happy her team had played so well, and she thought they were going to have a good season. To avoid a lecture on responsibility, she didn’t mention that her sunglasses had been broken that morning. When she got home, she put two more pairs in her backpack, both in their protective cases.
The day school started the following week, Ava kept feeling random pain in her lower abdomen. It had begun the week before but was becoming more noticeable. It wasn’t even a pain, really—it just felt different. The sensation was so unfamiliar to her, but she wrote it off as nervousness due to the new school year.
When Ava noticed that she was starting to look and feel bloated, she realized what was happening and began to panic. But who could she tell? Her parents would probably freak out and yell at her. Her friends absolutely wouldn’t understand. She wished it would go away, as her fifteen-year-old mind reasoned was a possibility, and ignored it. Her soccer jersey was large and loose enough that no one noticed at practice, but she had to roll the waistline of her shorts down below her swollen midriff. She wore oversize T-shirts at school to hide her rapidly growing belly.
She was at her locker grabbing some markers for her art class when a classmate, Graham, opened the locker next to hers. She was rummaging around for an errant marker that had fallen to the bottom while absentmindedly balancing her spiral-bound sketchbook, using her distended abdomen like a shelf as she secured the book under her chin.
“Hey, Ava. Do you need some help holding things?” Graham offered.
She was startled, and as she looked up, her sketchbook fell to the floor.
“I got it,” Graham said. He grabbed it and handed it to her with a grin that highlighted his dimples.
“Thank you so much!”
“Do you need any more help?”
“No, thanks, Graham,” Ava replied, holding the book below her chest and over her stomach. She then pulled her backpack from over her shoulder and awkwardly held it in front of her. She tried to read his expression for clues as to what he was thinking, but he just seemed like his usual kind self.
“Okay, then. See ya later.” He gave her a little salute as he headed to his class.
Graham had always been nice to her, but he was also nice to everyone. She didn’t know anyone who disliked him. Teachers, coaches, classmates—no one had anything negative to say about him. She remembered that one of their homeroom teachers had called him “a good egg” one day. Ava had never heard that expression before, but once she learned what the phrase meant, she thought it was sweet and described him well.
