The Clone's Mother Read Online Free

I can’t take the baby with me where I’m going. I’m putting her up for adoption. I need you to find some parents.”
    Another wow. This had never happened to me in all the years I’d been in nursing. She waited while I tried to find where my voice had gone.
    “You do know people who want a baby, don’t you?” She slipped her hand from mine and plucked the covers on her bed. She averted her round eyes to the wall.
    My skeptical side argued with my hopeful side while I tried to figure out how to respond. My non-biased professional side finally answered.
    “Are you sure, Nikki? This is a huge decision.” I reached out to still her hand that picked the fuzz balls off the blanket draped below her mound of belly.
    She narrowed her eyes at me. “It’s already made.” An edge had crept back into her voice. “I’m going to do this. Can you help me? Do you know anyone?”
    I felt guilty. “Yes, there’s a couple I know.”
    “They good people?”
    “The best you could meet.” I meant it sincerely, but it sounded like a sales pitch.
    “Tell me about them.” The sharp edges had dropped back out of her voice. Then she moaned, cussed, and closed her eyes. “Wait, another one’s coming.” Her eyes refocused on me once the contraction had passed.
    “Well…” I put my hair behind my ear. “She’s my father’s sister’s daughter—my cousin, Anna. She’s thirty-four. Been married twelve years to Joe, her high school sweetheart. They’ve tried to have kids for ten years but can’t, even with all kinds of treatments. They have a dog—a little beagle, like Snoopy. That’s his name too. Joe’s a CPA. Anna’s a third-grade teacher. She’s very meticulous about everything. Let’s see. They’re healthy, happy, you know. All that kind of thing.” I caught my breath a moment, trying not to let my hopeful side take over, then pressed on. “They’ve gone through the whole adoption evaluation process already. They’ve just been waiting for a baby.”
    “Do they love each other?” She looked at me more earnestly than ever.
    “They’re like newlyweds,” I said. And meant it. They actually still adored each other, unlike so many other couples I knew.
    “Will you call them, see if they want my baby?”
    “Oh, I know they’ll want your baby. But I don’t think I can just call them. We should contact a mediator or something, if this is what you want.” This was surreal. Can I really be just a phone call away from getting a baby for Anna? “I know someone, a lawyer. He’s my uncle. He’ll help, and it won’t cost you anything. I’ll call him and see what he says, okay?”
    Nikki nodded, but then another contraction distracted her and she said no more.
    “I’ll come back in a few minutes.” She nodded, her eyes shut as she tried to deal with the pain. Though it was late, I knew I should try to get Uncle Howard on the phone. If this was going to happen, he’d need to get a jump on things.
     
    ***
     
    I called Uncle Howard from a courtesy phone in a dimly-lit waiting room down the hall from the Labor and Delivery main desk. My cell was in a bag of rice on my kitchen counter, where I daily chanted spells over it to will it to turn back on. It hadn’t cooperated since two weeks ago when it somehow jumped out of my scrub pocket and did a belly flop into the toilet at work. I’d fished it out, but since I was afraid to open my eyes to see where my hand was, it took a lot more swishing around than probably was good for it.
    But a girl could still hope. And chant. And invoke every possible power she could think of to get it to work again, because that puppy wasn’t insured and had a year of payments left. After extensive financial counseling plus consolidating my debt, I knew just buying a new one would break all kinds of rules. Rice and mojo were my only hope.
    I held the phone to my ear while my stomach flip-flopped between a pit of sorrow for Nikki’s bleak story and guilty excitement over the