'What?' was all that she could muster. A sick tightness gripped her stomach.
'Hey, I'm sorry, but we've already got the color separations done on their photo. We'll do the best we can on interior lay-out, though. Now, let's start off with vital stats. What's the baby's birth weight and length?'
'I-I don't-'
'You're right, I can get that from the mother. Now, do you suspect that the doctor was in the service of the CIA, KGB, or extraterrestrial forces?'
Valerie stared at the phone in revulsion and switched it off. It promptly rang again. She let it. After four rings, the answer-ing machine took over.
'Hello?' her voice said.
'Good evening,' said another man's voice. 'I'm-'
'Oh, hi! You have reached Ron and Valerie's place...'
Following the tone, the caller, obviously annoyed at having been tricked by the recording, said, 'My name is Bobby Roy Jensen, and I heard about you on the TV. I know you must be going through a terrible crisis, and I considered it my Chris-tian duty to offer you Bible counseling during your time of troubled decision. Please call me at Klondike five four-one-eight-oh. If you need immediate help, please turn to psalm eighty-eight, especially verse te-'
The recorder's thirty-second timer ran out, cutting him off. The phone rang again. This time the message activated on the first ring. Valerie numbly listened to it play through, waiting for the caller's message as if she were tuned in to a radio drama.
There was no message. The caller hung up. The phone rang again a few seconds later.
'I think you're a real sick bitch,' said a man's voice tinged with the slur of alcohol. 'You and your money-hungry boy-friend. You live in sin and try to kill your bastard to cover up your evil, but you got tricked, didn't you, and now you try to gouge some money out of it.'
She listened to the voice in a nauseated, drifting blur of un-reality. The world was invading her bedroom, and it was a world of hate and invective directed at her.
'Whaddayou want your baby back now,' the voice rambled, 'after you'd given it up for dead? `Cuz there's a buck in it? Or is your boyfriend running for office? Your kind makes me-' When the tape cut off, the caller rang again. At the sound of his voice Valerie reached out to switch off the unit's monitor. Then she walked slowly through the house, turning the switches on all the telephones to silence. The messages would accumulate, but she wouldn't have to hear them. In the silence, the words of the last message echoed relent-lessly in her mind. She'd given up her baby months ago when it was nothing more than a little blob of tissue. Just a potential baby. Now that it was real, did she have any right to demand it back? Did the money matter? Why did Ron put that in the law-suit? She understood that it was a way to make the defendants sit up and take notice, but it all seemed so venal. All she wanted was Jennifer.
Someone knocked at the door. She ignored it. Whoever it was rang the doorbell again and again.
'Stop it!' she screamed. Running to the bathroom, she seized a thick green towel and ran to the foyer. She rammed folds of cloth between the hanging chimes, deadening the sound to the muffled thunk of the solenoids.
The thunking stopped suddenly, accompanied by a flare of camera lights and flashes, a scuffling sound on the front steps, and a familiar voice shouting, 'Get the hell off!' Ron quickly entered, closing and locking the door behind him. He hugged Valerie with fierce intensity.
Through sobs and tissues she told him about their hour apart. He guided her to the bedroom, where he laid her down on the covers and helped to undress her.
'And the really awful part of it was those phone calls.' She looked at Ron as he pulled her blouse off.
'I don't want to go through with this, Ron. Can't we just let them have the baby?' Ron helped her under the sheets and pulled the comforter over her before answering. She could tell that he was mar-shaling his thoughts for a convincing, logical statement.
'Val, you know I love you and I don't want to put you through any pain. But what Dr. Fletcher did to you is just unconscio-nable.'
He pulled off his turtleneck and jeans, undressing quickly to slide into bed beside her. 'Doctors can't be allowed to treat women and children like experimental cattle. She can't go around taking babies as if they were livestock to be sold to the highest bidder. That sort of thinking leads to political eugen-ics. To breeding and killing programs for the good of the state or the good of the race. Dr. Fletcher may think she has the noblest of motives, but she's really no different from a Nazi scientist-' Valerie buried her head in Ron's arm and cried, her tears hot and unyielding.
'This will be a very important case, Val. A landmark deci-sion. I have to be the lawyer who sees this through,
