Page 9 of Jasper
I feel Mrs. Whitmore’s spine straighten beside me. Mr. Whitmore tugs her closer into the circle of his arm.
“A complication?” she repeats. “What kind of complication, exactly?”
The director looks directly at me. Then back at the Whitmores.
“There was an error at the lab level,” he says carefully. “A mislabeled cryogenic sample was used during the insemination procedure.” He clears his throat, “The embryo we inserted was not created with Mr. Whitmore’s genetic material.”
I blink. “What… what does that mean?”
The doctor meets my eyes. “The embryo you’re carrying is genetically yours and a donor’s. But not Mr. Whitmore’s.”
Mrs. Whitmore goes rigid. “No,” she says flatly. “That’s not possible.”
He lowers his voice. “I’m afraid it is.”
“But I saw the file. I saw the chart. The chain of custody.”
“There was a mislabeling. A handling error. We’re already investigating the full scope. But the pregnancy is viable.”
“This is insane,” Mr. Whitmore sputters. “We agreed that my genetic material would be used.”
“So, you’re saying,” Mrs. Whitmore says slowly, her voice cold as ice, “she’s carrying someone else’s baby? Not my husband’s? Not ours?”
The doctor nods once. “Yes. That’s correct.”
She stands so fast her chair screeches backward.
“No,” she says again. “No. This is your mistake. You need to fix it.”
My mouth opens, but no sound comes out. My heart is hammering so hard I can feel it beating in my chest. I’m in utter disbelief. I look down at my stomach again. At the flatness that will soon swell with a stranger’s baby. I honestly don’t know where this leaves me.
The doctor holds up his hands in a pacifying gesture. “Please. I understand this is upsetting, but we want to make this right. I’ve already reached out to corporate and legal. If you’ll give me a minute, I’ll find out what options they’re willing to offer you in recompense.”
“Fine. I want to hear what they’re going to do about this clusterfuck,” she spits back.
The poor man is up and out the door before any of us can blink. The door closes behind him with a soft click. The second the latch clicks into place, the air shifts.
She turns to me and the look on her face scares me a bit. She looks like she could kill someone about now. Naturally not me, because she wants me to carry her child. I feel like cautioning that medical director to give her a few minutes to calm down though because I could easily see her scratching his eyes out.
I open my mouth to say something soothing, but she cuts me off before I can get the words out.
“You need to terminate.”
I blink, struggling to get my head around what she’s suggesting. “What?”
You heard me,” she says. “Abort the embryo you’re carrying, and we’ll start again. The right way this time.”
I stare at her, brain trying to catch up. “But it’s a viable pregnancy, I’m almost ten weeks.”
“We’re not interested in the child you’re carrying,” Mr. Whitmore interrupts. His tone is flat and businesslike. “We paid for a biological heir to the Whitmore family fortune. I cannotsimply accept any stray off the street as my heir. Tell me you at least understand that.”
I start to get sick to my stomach. “You want me to kill my baby because it’s not yours?” I ask, my voice shaking more than I want it to.
Mrs. Whitmore tilts her head, like I’m being unreasonable. “You told us you had no interest in a child of your own. Whoever’s genetic material they used isn’t going to reimburse you for carrying his child. So why would you carry a child no one wants to term, and give birth to it? That doesn’t even begin to make rational sense. You know that, right?”
“I can’t just terminate a pregnancy because it’s inconvenient for you.”
“And just why not? You weren’t hired to raise moral objections. You were hired to carry our child. This one isn’t.”
