videocassette popped out into her waiting hand. She took a case from one of the drawers, slipped the cassette in, and wrote a few notes on the outside. Then she quietly set to the task of cleaning the device.
Cleanup was usually a job left for nurses or surgical techni-cians. Dr. Fletcher, though, guarded her new machine jeal-ously. No one else besides Nurse Dyer even knew about this night's operation. What was known throughout the hospital was that Dr. Fletcher considered the Reproductive Endocri-nology department to be her own private stomping ground. Her success with the fertility clinic gave her the freedom to call the shots.
Even so, she had to be cautious this time. Trust no one. Do all the dirty work. Leave everything spotless. She had finally crossed the line.
She quietly emptied the holding tank into a container marked with the curving red biohazard trefoil. Out poured a transpar-ent, thickish carnelian liquid. Here and there, suspended in the mixture, floated little deep-red clumps of tissue and clot-ted blood. She washed out the container with powerful detergents, rinsed it with methanol, and placed it in the autoclave for sterilization. The hysteroscope and microsurgical gear re-ceived meticulous cleaning, followed by treatment in a steril-izing bath-they were too delicate for the autoclave.
The customized tubing, probes, and suction hoses were all disposable. She placed them in a receptacle after making note of the specific design she had created on the spot. Each pa-tient would require unique combinations of hardware-notes now could save her time in the future. A future she saw as bold, bright, and terrifying.
The cleanup took twice as long as the operation.
When everything had been returned to orderly cleanliness, Dr. Fletcher glanced at her watch. Nine forty- five.
She could be in bed by ten-thirty if she hurried.
'
Even in sleep, Evelyn could not escape the consequences of her decision. A dream grabbed her and would not let go. In it she lay-once again nineteen-upon a stiff white table, feel-ing a young life drain out of her. She was alone, all alone. Not even the abortionist was present. The room became a vast plain that she raced over, flying in her blood-drenched hospital gown. Covered with the sectioned remains of the dead, the plain stretched for unthinkable miles in all directions.
Suddenly, she stood upon a glacier. Trapped within the ice lay hundreds of frozen sacs. Inside the sacs rested tiny, indis-tinct embryos. Evelyn experienced their patient expectation, longing to help them find a way out of their frozen limbo. Their whispered cries grew audible, distinct.
'You've opened the Door,' they said with that portentous significance found only in dreams. 'You can free us now.'
'Free us now.'
'Neither you nor anyone can close the Door,' they mur-mured.
'Can't close the Door.'
She realized that she was chanting with them in a mystical rite. White-robed surgeons, arms dipped to the elbows in crim-son, chanted with her and the dead-before-life. Scarlet flames appeared on the blue ice.
'Bring us through the Door. Open for us the Gate of Life.'
'The Gate of Life,' she repeated.
The ice cracked like a thunderbolt.
Evelyn's entire body quaked. She lay in bed staring into dark-ness. The dim blue light from the alarm clock glowed in the corner of her field of vision. The sheets stuck to her, wet with perspiration. The Door in the dream, she realized, was a one-way exit from her life as a respected physician. She had crossed its threshold that evening and could never return.
VI
In the weeks after the operation, Valerie knew that her deci-sion had been the right one. She was back at work the follow-ing Monday. Ernie Sewell had told everyone that she had taken a couple of sick days for the flu, so she had no need to concoct a cover story. Most people avoided her the first few days back, carefully sympathizing at a distance.
At home, Ron seemed even more loving and tender. As soon as she was able, they took long walks around Lunada Bay, hand in hand, briskly or languidly. They spoke about their future, made plans, looked at larger, more expensive homes around where they strolled.
Her security in her new position grew with every day of ac-complishment. She found that she had an
