A Nearly Perfect Copy - By Allison Amend Page 0,80
that we are taking advantage of their grief. I assure you, that is not the case. You should not feel embarrassed, any more than you would feel looking for a medical answer to a medical condition. And do not be afraid to hope. There is a very good chance we can return your son to you. But if we can’t, you have tried everything in your power, exhausted every option, you see?”
Elm nodded, taking back her hand. She wiped her eyes. The tissue came back with deep black smudges from what was left of her mascara. She crumpled it into a ball and held it in her free fist.
“I wasn’t expecting … this,” she said. “I thought it would be a hospital, or a sanatorium or something. I didn’t expect a mansion.”
“We house the laboratory in an addition in back,” he said. “And the in vitro is routine—it can be done at the office of any doctor. And then you have a normal pregnancy.”
“I just thought it would be sort of like a farm, with animals? My friend … her dog—”
“We have another site for nonhuman subjects,” Michel said, with such an earnestness that Elm smiled. “Maybe you’d like to tour the facilities?”
They stood and walked into the hallway. At the end, a sharp corner revealed glass doors secured with a fingerprinting panel. Michel put his second finger on the pad and said his name in a loud voice. The doors swung inward, revealing a small lab about the size of a high school science room and decorated somewhat similarly, with petri dishes and microscopes. Inside, two people were standing in front of what looked like a microwave oven, watching something inside whir and whistle. They smiled at Elm and said nothing. Michel led her to another door, which revealed an examining room with a table and stirrups. Behind a wall was a small operating theater, tidy and silent.
“And that is all,” Michel said. “You’ll never see any other guests here. And if you decide to go ahead, we will meet only once more.”
They walked back into Michel’s office. The space between the blinds projected a rectangular patch of light on the floor.
“You have questions?” Michel asked. He walked around the desk to sit down, motioning that Elm do the same in one of the two brown leather club chairs that faced it.
“I was wondering about … compensation.”
“Our fee structure is outlined here.” Michel handed her a sheet. “The total fee is $250,000. We ask that you make a down payment of forty percent. Another forty percent is due when we successfully replicate the DNA, and the third payment of $50,000 is due upon implantation. All of these deposits are nonrefundable. We can make no guarantees about the outcome of each of the parts of the proceedings. If a certain part of the process is unsuccessful and you would like to try again, and we consider it within our medical power to rectify the problem, then an additional $25,000 is required to retry that step. Is that clear?”
Elm took a deep breath. Where would she get that kind of money? “I’m not sure …”
“Say you decided to go ahead. You give me $100,000 as soon as possible, and the DNA sample. My lab retrieves the DNA and grows several cells to retrieve the DNA nucleus. You, meanwhile, take an estrogen receptor modulator to prepare yourself for egg retrieval. This is easy to order from Mexico or Canada. You will come to see us in about two months, at which point you will pay an additional $100,000 and we will retrieve your eggs. Wait, I remember in your file that you have poor ovarian reserve. Very well, we get a donor egg. That will add an additional $20,000 to the price, and increases the chance the egg won’t implant, but only very slightly. Then you pay the remaining $50,000 and we implant the egg. Voilà.”
“What kinds of things can go wrong?” Elm asked.
Michel blew air out of his cheeks in a way that reminded Elm of Colette, making a poof sound to indicate that many problems might occur. “Well,” he said. “It has happened that the artifacts fail to produce a valid sample that we can extract DNA from. Sometimes, for reasons unknown, the cells fail to reproduce when implanted into an egg. Then there are the risks associated with IVF—that the egg won’t implant, that the woman will have an ectopic pregnancy. And there are the associated risks of pregnancy—risk