"Matt might say it does," she said quietly. "The day after Raji was kidnapped, he told me–he told me that all the stuff I'd gone through would never make sense unless I transformed it into something useful. I didn't have any idea what he was talking about, back then. But I do now."
"Find some other way to do it, then." Kevin's voice was tight. "We just don't know enough about this kid. I've read some of the articles: the parents were just off the plane from Kazakhstan or some benighted place. Who knows what kind of prenatal nutrition this kid got, even before the CV? We don't know their genetic background. There aren't any records, Merry."
Merry stiffened. "When I agreed to marry you, you said genes didn't matter. You just told me you agreed with that."
"I agree that having our genes doesn't matter. I never said that genes don't matter at all. And if we adopted this kid, we'd be combining a genetic unknown with a medical unknown. It's crazy, Merry."
"The news reports say he's alert and healthy and needs a loving home."
"Of course they'd say that. And I'm sure he'll get a loving home with someone else. Walking Marzipan every day is enough work right now." The dog, hearing his name, ran in from the kitchen and hurled himself into Kevin's lap, yapping hysterically.
Meredith had to smile. "Come on, Kevin. You love Marzipan."
"I adore Marzipan. And I adore the cat, and I adore you. But trotting with Marzipan up and down the Filbert steps is all the challenge I need right now; I don't want to add two A.M. feedings and diaper changes. Especially not for an at-risk child. Okay? Now please: twenty-four hours ago, you didn't even know this kid existed. It's too soon to decide you want to take him home. Okay?"
"Okay," she said. "When won't it be too soon? Kevin, every child's an at-risk child! Life's a risky proposition. Perfect safety isn't possible."
"Merry." Kevin's voice held a rare note of warning. "Yes, that's true, but some kids are more at risk than others. The answer's no, okay?"
"If I promise to talk to Matt, if I promise to do a lot of research and visit the baby in the hospital—Kevin, you know how much I hate hospitals, so you know how much that means—if—" .
"No. Because those are all I statements. You'd be doing all of that, and adopting a baby is a we proposition. And I'm not on board on this, and I'm not going to be. Do you understand?"
"I can't get him out of my head."
"You haven't been trying for very long."
"I won't be able to get him out of my head. I know that in my bones, in my gut. Kevin, I know it sounds crazy. I do know that. But, Kevin, I knew two years before you proposed to me that you were going to propose. I knew it in my bones, just like I know that this baby is, is "—she stopped herself from saying mine—"ours. Our son. I know it the same way I knew that you and I would be married, and—"
"And you were willing to wait two years for that," Kevin said drily. "Okay: if no one's adopted him in two years, we'll talk about it."
"Kevin!"
"No," he said, very gently. "Meredith, it's late and we both need to go to work in the morning. Let's get some sleep, all right? You're distraught. You'll see this differently in the morning."
* * *
She didn't. She fell asleep thinking about the baby, woke up thinking about the baby. She knew how irrational she must seem to the people around her, but the feeling of certainty hadn't left her. It had intensified.
Kevin, already awake, was lying in bed looking at her, his face still soft with sleep. "Hey," he said, and reached out to brush a strand of hair from her cheek.
"Hey." She moved closer, displacing a disgruntled Ashputtle, and kissed him.
"How are you feeling? Any better?"
She sighed. "I feel fine. I felt fine last night." Stall. Make him think you're not still thinking about this. No, don't do that. Don't lie to Kevin. "Kevin, I feel fine. I haven't changed my mind, though."
He groaned. "Merry, you can't know you want to adopt this child. You can't. You haven't even met—"
"Can't I? You knew you wanted to marry me before you met me." "No, Merry, I did not know that I wanted to marry you! I knew I wanted to meet you, and after I met you I knew I wanted to marry you. There's a difference. Do you understand that?"
"Of course," she said, and rolled away from him. "But I want to meet him today. Is that all right? I want to go to Oakland Children's Hospital and just—just look at him. I don't have any meetings scheduled until two. I'll call the office and tell them I'll be late. Do you think that's crazy? If I go, maybe I'll—come to my senses." No. Don't lie to Kevin. "Maybe I'll see that I'm being nuts. I don't think I will, but it's possible."
"Ah," said Kevin.
She swallowed. "Will you come with me, Kevin? Please?"
"No. I'm not going to go to a hospital to visit a stranger."
"Well; will you let me go?"
"I don't have any choice, do I? You're an adult."
"Yes, you do have a choice," she said, pained by the bitterness in his voice. "If you tell me not to go, I won't. I promise. Kevin, I know this seems crazy to you, really I do. If you say I can't go—"
"You'd never forgive me. Merry, I can't stop you. But we're not adopting him, and that's final."
* * *
She'd never expected to walk willingly back into an isolation unit, and he didn't want to regret it. She did some research that morning, and then she called a hospital administrator, on an encrypted line, to alert him that she'd be visiting and to request a media blackout. Visiting hours hadn't started yet, but he promised her that no reporters were there, and he wasn't about to tell her she couldn't come. She was Preston Walford's daughter, and MacroCorp had given the hospital a generous grant for the installation of the iso unit.
When she got there, the nurse at the desk buzzed her right in. "Ms. Walford-Lindgren, this is an honor."
"Thank you. I just want to see the little boy."
"Yes, of course."
He was being fed by a nurse in a spacesuit; a pile of motionless terrycovered bots lay in a corner. Meredith had warned the administrator of her phobia and asked if the bots could be taken offline during her visit. She stood at the window, watching the infant suck contentedly at his bottle. The movement of the tiny mouth mesmerized her, and once again she felt a physical craving to reach through the glass and snatch him out of there. For the first time in her life, she believed in love at first sight. She stood with her hands pressed against the glass, and the tech said something into a microphone.
The nurse nodded and carried the baby closer to the window. The blue eyes seemed even more enormous in real life than they had on the video. The baby had a thin smattering of brown hair, and he was wearing a Wally Walrus snuggly. Meredith wondered if the outfit had been chosen to appeal to her family loyalty. At least Wally wasn't one of the characters who'd killed Raji.
Meredith waved at the baby, and he blinked. Hands waving haphazardly, he looked like some twentieth-century cinematic version of a visitor from outer space. Merry pressed her nose more firmly against the glass and made a funny face. "So is there anybody who wants to adopt him?"
"Well, no," the tech said. "Nobody yet. I guess everybody figures there has to be something wrong with him. Nobody comes out of CV unscathed, you know? It's almost scarier not knowing what the scars will be, having to wait to find out. Too big an emotional investment for most people, not to mention the medical risk. I can't blame them. It would be a pretty exalted thing to do."
"I think it would be a humane thing to do," Meredith said, and waved at the baby again. He waved back, in his fashion. The nurse, behind her helmet, smiled.
"He's happy," the tech said. "He doesn't see many new people. I didn't mean to offend you."
Meredith chewed her lip. "I guess I could only hold him if I wore a suit? And went in there?"
"Well, to actually hold him, yeah. But we've got some glove boxes so we can play with him." He spoke into the microphone again, and the nurse nodded and carried the baby around a corner to another part of the unit. Meredith, following where the tech pointed, found herself looking down into a bassinet glove box. The baby lay on his back, blinking up at her. "Hey there," she said, and stuck one hand tentatively into a glove. She waggled her index finger at the baby, who grabbed it. She imagined that she could feel the heat of that tiny grip through the rubber, although she couldn't have. Emboldened, she inserted her other hand into the other glove and tickled the baby's stomach. He kicked and fussed, his eyes still fixed on her face. "Can he see me?" she asked.
"Sure. His vision's fine."
"But I mean through the plastic and all. Can he see that far? Can he focus yet? I don't know when they learn that stuff." She realized just how little she knew about children, even having observed Theo, how woefully unprepared she was to raise a child. She'd have been woefully unprepared even with the lead time of pregnancy. Still, she was smart and learned fast, and Constance would help.
"He can focus," the tech said. "He sees you. Holding on to your fmger that way is a reflex: all babies have it. Infant primates have to hang on to their mother's fur, or on to branches or whatever's handy."
Yes, she'd read that somewhere. "What's his name? I mean, I know you can't tell me his real name, but what do you call him?"
The tech laughed. "Oh, we all have our pet names. The nurse who's back there now, Linda, she and I call him Old Fusspot, and Dr. Monte calls him Sammy, and Candy on night shift calls him Max. "
"I'm going to call him Nicholas," Meredith said quietly. It had been Kevin's father's name.
* * *
"I'm with Kevin," Constance said. They were in the Pacific Heights solarium; Meredith had called her mother and asked if she could come to the house for lunch before she went to work. "It's a terrible idea. Merry, aside from the medical and emotional risk, if you adopt that child, he'll be a publicity magnet for the rest of his life. It's not a normal existence. Kevin made a conscious adult decision to take that on. The baby can't."
"According to that logic, you shouldn't have had me."
"That was different."
"Because I was your genetic material," Meredith said. The bitterness in her voice surprised her. She closed her eyes and said, "Look, Mom, it's a damned privileged existence, among other things." Her social status had killed Raji; please, please, let her be able to use it now to help someone, to save this child. For so long she'd been afraid to love because of what had happened. Everyone had told her she had to love, and now that she was loving, they were telling her to stop. "And we can pay for privacy. We're already doing that. I'm not all that famous anymore, anyway; ScoopNet hasn't hounded me for years. Nicholas doesn't have any privacy in the hospital, but he'll have it here. And here he can breathe the air and people can touch him."
"What about Kevin?"
"I'll convince Kevin."
"It doesn't sound like it. And, Merry, even if you do convince Kevin, this is a huge step. You can't return the baby if you change your mind later."
"Don't you think I know that?"
"I know you know it intellectually. You can't know it on a gut level. Nobody can know it who hasn't been through three A.M. feedings and getting hit with projectile vomit from screaming toddlers with the flu. You're only seeing his cute side now. The hospital staff is doing all the dirty work."
"I'm the one who likes to clean, remember?"
Constance laughed. "Child rearing doesn't lend itself to Zen, I'm afraid. Quite the opposite."
"Well, you did fine, and you hate to clean. So how'd you do it?"
"Maternal instinct," Constance said gently. "Which you can't will, Merry. It really is biological. It grows in you as the baby grows, and it allows you to do things that never would have been possible otherwise. That, and hired help. Or bots."
Meredith felt as if she were choking. "Well, I can hire help too, and I'll take hormone supplements, if you think it's necessary."
"Merry—"
"So I can't be a good mother because I can't get pregnant? What kind of nonsense is that?"
"Merry, I'm sure you'd be a fine mother to Nicholas, but someone else will be too, and you'll be an equally fine mother to some other child in a few years, when Kevin's ready to be a fine father. Kevin's right. He matters too. Let someone else do it."
"He'll change his mind if he meets the baby. I know he will."
"I wouldn't count on it. He can be just as stubborn as you are, remember?"
Meredith sighed. "Mom, I have to get to work now. I'll call you later, all right?"
* * *
Her work day passed in a blur, until she could get home and talk to Kevin. When she walked in the door, she smelled dinner. "Ginger beef stir-fry?" she called into the kitchen.
"Yup. So how was the hospital?"
"It was great. The baby's really sweet." She walked into the kitchen and hugged Kevin, who was standing at the stove.
"That's what I was afraid of. Would you not do that while I'm cooking, please?" She stepped back, stung. He'd never asked her not to hug him before. "Merry, don't sulk. I'm working with hot oil, that's all."
"Sorry."
"Your father called. He wants to talk to you."
"What about?"
"What do you think?" Kevin gave the stir-fry a savage stir, sending several pieces flying out of the wok, and Merry took another step back.
"How does he know about it?"
"Because your mother told him, dummy! And they've consulted Matt. Preston told me you want to name the baby after my father. You aren't even asking my opinion on that?"
Meredith bit back her anger. Her father had no right to tell Kevin anything, but the important thing now was her husband's hurt feelings. "Kevin, I'm sorry. I thought it would make you happy."