From the Inside FlapDr. Alexander Brundage sat at an oaken roll-top desk, the light of a little lamp bathing the book before him. He wrote in a neat, careful, script, now and then pausing to read what he had written. A pipe was in his mouth and the exhaled smoke collected in a cloud beneath the ceiling of the little apartment. The lamp was the only light in the apartment and he was alone in the room, his wife of six years having gone to bed after an exhausting and aroused day. The entry in his personal diary was longer than usual, deserving of more than the one or two lines he normally wrote.
Eureka! We ultimately did it! After 277 tries we were successful in cloning a sheep. The lamb was born today and it appears to be altogether normal. Although we are not sure yet that it is veritably a clone, pending DNA testing, it surely seems to be. This is a momentous day for us. We’re the initial group to with great success clone a mammal! We are not announcing it until we are sure, but we want to hold a news group discussion in the near future.
The sad news for the day is that Eileen found out that, after three miscarriages in the past year, the diagnostic workup shows that she has a bicornuate uterus. This is going to make a term pregnancy difficult if not impossible. According to her doctor, her uterus is in truth in the shape of a “Y” with neither limb big sufficient to support a full term pregnancy. The hysterogram today was very definite. She is terribly upset, and so am I. How ironic that with all my interest in genealogy, and all my exploration into the Brundage family tree going back two or three centuries, I will have to be the basi of my family to be unable to give rise to an heir for myself. We have prayed so hard for a child, but God has not yet answered our prayers. Perhaps I will have to be angry with Him but I am not. Maybe He will open number of things from which only one can be chosen to us. We are sure that Eileen is ovulating and there is a possibleness that an in-vitro fertilization would be successful, but a surrogate mother would be necessary and Eileen is opposed to this. There have been so a good deal of horror stories regarding surrogate mothers who have refused to give up the child upon deliverance that we are affrighted to probability it. Wouldn’t it be wondrous if I could be involved in the basi humane clone—of myself? Still, it would require a surrogate mother. God will provide.
He stopped writing, substituted his pipe in the ashtray and leaned back in the chair. He raised his glasses to his forehead and pinched the bridge of his nose amongst his thumb and forefinger. He substituted his glasses and once again went over what he had written, here pausing to draw a single line through a word, there adding a word amidst the lines in cramped letters. By the time he finished editing the entry it was well past midnight, but before he closed and locked the diary he read portions of it one more time.
Received another inquiry from the states with regards to establishing a fertility clinic, this one from someplace in Pennsylvania. I’ll have to look it up on the map. My psychological result of perception learning and reasoning of U.S. geography leaves something to be desired. More tomorrow.
He closed and locked the book, and returned the key to the back corner of the desk drawer. He leaned back, stretched, took one more puff on the pipe, which was now out, and substituted it in the ashtray. He turned out the lamp, climbed the stairs, and went to the bathroom to empty his bladder and brush his teeth. He stripped to his shorts and climbed into bed next to his barren wife, now fast asleep. He pushed versus her, heard her moan in her sleep, and felt the moisture on the pillow, wet with her tears. He sighed and slipped into an uneasy slumber.
About the AuthorDr. Donald Duckles was born in the Boot Heel of southern Missouri. He attended Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. He graduated from the Medical College of the University of Illinois in 1955 and moved to Akron, Ohio, where he finished a residency in standard surgery at the Akron General Medical Center. After two years in the Navy he moved to Rochester, New York, where he was a Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of Rochester Medical School. He maintained a private exercise in surgery at Highland Hospital in Rochester for almost forty years, retiring in June 2001.
Engrossing Story