They put up the curtain anyway, ignoring her. Jenny looked out through the clear wall. Ward stood just outside, smoking a cigar, accompanied by several researchers.
“Seth,” Jenny whispered to Dr. Parker. “He’s supposed to be here...I told you.”
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Parker said, her voice fuzzy and mechanical through the tiny speaker on her hazmat suit. “They decided it was too much of a security risk.”
Jenny looked at Ward again. “Seth needs to be here.”
“I’m sure Dr. Parker can manage just fine without him,” Ward replied, blowing smoke.
“We had a deal,” Jenny said.
“To be honest, Seth isn’t that interested in you anymore,” Ward told her. “He’s been shacked up with your pal Mariella for a few months now. They’ve been having a good old time together.” He winked.
Jenny didn’t believe him. She pushed back any memories of Sebastian and Mia’s relationship in their last life. She was already surrounded by enemies at this most vulnerable moment in her entire life. She had plenty to worry about without letting Ward get under her skin.
Nobody spoke much while they made their preparations. Jenny could feel the thick tension weighing down the room. The doctor and the two nurses were clearly afraid of coming into contact with her flesh and blood, even in their hazmat suits. The two guards flanking the airlock door kept their hands on their stunners, as if Jenny were going to lash out while her womb was cut open in the middle of a cesarean delivery.
The room became very quiet.
“Jenny, we’re making the first incision,” Dr. Parker said.
“Okay,” Jenny whispered. Everything in the world fell away except her absolute terror at what was about to happen. She looked toward the wall of her cube again, some part of her half-expecting to see Seth, but there was only Ward and his hateful sneer, flanked by guards, scientists, and a nurse watching the row of monitors.
Jenny watched the women working on her, barely able to see their faces behind their biohazard masks, clear shields that reflected the bright lights above. She couldn’t help thinking of alien abduction stories from the History Channel, people waking up under bright lights to find strange extraterrestrials performing unknown operations on them. That experience, hallucinated or not, was probably about as emotionally cold and inhuman as this surgery.
She had no way of seeing what the doctor was doing beyond the screen, and she didn’t dare speak or ask questions that could distract them. The medical staff didn’t speak to her at all. Jenny might as well have been a farm animal getting a veterinary visit. A cow, maybe, because her body felt so swollen and heavy.
She waited and waited, listening to the electronic beeps echoing her pounding heart.
“Uh-oh,” the doctor whispered.
“Uh-oh? What’s uh-oh?” Jenny asked, imagining the scalpel stabbing the little baby through the foot, or the arm, or the head.
“Please be quiet,” the nurse closest to Jenny said, scowling at her.
“Clamp,” Dr. Parker said, ignoring Jenny altogether.
Jenny heard her heart beep even faster. She was sweating, barely able to think, her head swirling with nightmares and the memories of countless bloody miscarriages and heart-ripping stillbirths.
An eternity seemed to pass, then another, then another.
“Breech,” Dr. Parker said quietly.
Jenny didn’t dare ask another question of the semi-hostile medical staff, but she remembered that a breech meant the baby was positioned backwards, and it was considered not good. Her sweat felt like ice, and her heart beat even faster.
She had no idea what was happening beyond the green sheet of plastic. She could distantly feel movement and pressure, but couldn’t tell what any of it meant, and the doctor and nurses weren’t talking.
After another thousand eternities, Dr. Parker stepped back, holding what Jenny first saw as a strange, dark sea creature, wet and dripping in the doctor’s gloves. It took a moment to resolve into the shape of a baby. A gray, unmoving baby.
She felt a grieved sob building inside her chest. It had happened again, just like all the other times, despite their precautions and the help of modern science. Seth should have been there. If Seth were there, he could have helped. Maybe he could still help.
“Seth!” Jenny shouted. “Get Seth! Now!”
“Afraid not.” Ward chuckled over his cigar.
Jenny shot him a look of pure hate. She was going to kill him, she realized. She would hunt him down in every incarnation, killing him again and again, maybe for all of eternity. She would never forgive, never stop wanting to punish him.
The doctor massaged the baby, and as if by magic, the baby’s gray skin gradually grew pink and warm. The baby’s mouth opened, and she let out a powerful scream. Hello, world.