A Mother's Love

The next morning Fawn awoke and had her breakfast and prepared for her day. Excitement still filled her about the prospects of being a surrogate mother. She had decided that if she was accepted as a candidate she would do it, and be proud to participate in the program. Fawn gather all her things she needed for the day, including the paper she had wrote the night before, and set out to her daily routine at school. She headed down Russell Street towards the community college she attended on Rutherford Ave. Along the way she stopped and got a cup of coffee and met up with some fellow classmate headed to the college. They chatted about how they had stayed up late to finish the paper that was due and how they all hope that the professor would give them a good grade. Fawn listened and chatted with them, but her mind was thinking about the seminar tonight. She knew she was going to be picked to be a candidate. She could feel it in her heart.

The day passed by quickly and before Fawn knew it her class day was over. It was only three o’clock and she decided to go back to her apartment and tidy herself up a bit. When she finally reached her apartment she went directly to her closet and tried to decide what to wear. She wanted to portray a woman who looked like a potential surrogate mother. Nothing to flashy or gaudy, something that spoke of intellect, but not a shy wallflower. After going through almost her whole wardrobe, she decided on a tan skirt and a white frilly top with tan low heeled shoes and a purse to match her shoes. She took a quick shower and put on some fresh undergarments and finished dressing. She looked at herself in a full length mirror and was happy with what she saw, but something was missing. She turned and walked over to jewelry box sitting on her bureau. From the jewelry box she removed a long gold chain and wrapped it twice around her neck and went back to the mirror.

Checking herself out again she thought to herself “Now that’s what a surrogate mother should look like.”. She glanced over at the alarm clock next to her bed and saw it was 5:15 PM. She had enough time to make it to her appointment with plenty to spare.

Grabbing her purse from the chair she headed out to her appointment. She closed and locked her apartment door and headed down the stairs and out to Russell Street. Walking at a good pace she made it to the subway station and was standing on the train platform in a few minutes. She didn’t have to wait long before a subway train pulled in. The doors of the train opened and she walked to an almost empty car. Having no problem finding a seat she sat right next to the door. The train continued down the metal track transporting Fawn to her destiny. All sorts of thoughts ran through her mind. Will she be selected? What was the compensation amount she was going to get? What will happen when the time came to give up the child? The train was coming into the State Street station and Fawn realized this was her stop. She stood up and grabbed a hand pole to brace her for the stop. The doors of the train slide open and she walked out onto the platform and headed for the stairs. Ascending the stairs with a quick pace bought her out to street level in the downtown area of Boston. Fawn located Devonshire Street and headed south till it intersected with Milk Street. There she found the building she had been directed to on the southwest corner of the intersection.

She walked into the lobby of the building and noticed a receptionist. Fawn walked over to her and said, “Could you please direct me to the Surrogate Mother Program”. The receptionist asked for her name. She responded, “Fawn Moore”. The receptionist glanced down at a clip board then looked back up and said, “Take the elevator up to the seventh floor and report to room 712.” The receptionist then pointed to the right and said, “Elevators are in that direction’. Just then the desk phone rang and the receptionist answered it, “Hello, this is Shirley. How may I help you?” This must be the Shirley she had talked to the day before. Fawn turned to the right and saw the elevators and walked over to them. She pressed the up button and the door of the elevator slide open. A cold chill came over her as she entered the elevator. Fawn brushed it off as being nervous and pressed the number seven button. The doors slide shut and the sensation of the elevator upward motion came into effect.

When the elevator came to a stop the doors slide open and Fawn saw a sign on the opposite wall with an arrow pointing to the right. Below the arrow bright red letters read “Surrogate Mother Program”. Fawn step out of the elevator and went right down a long hall and found Room 712. When she entered the room there was a woman sitting behind a desk talking on the phone. The woman said, “Yes she is entering now. I’ll take it from here.” The woman hung up the phone and looked up at Fawn and said, “You must be Fawn Moore. I am Susan. Please have a seat and let’s get started will the interview.” Fawn sat down in the chair that was located just in front of the desk. Susan was a woman in what appeared to be her fifties. Dark hair and eyes and dressed in a blue pin stripe ladies business suit. She wore black rim glasses with lenses that made her eyes look enormously large. Susan must have been very near sighted to have such thick lenses in her glasses.

“Do you have a writing utensil?” asked Susan. “Yes, I do”, replied Fawn. She reached into her purse and withdrew a ball point pen. Susan handed her a clip with some printed pages on it and said, “Please fill out this paperwork and answer all the questions to the best of your ability. When you are finished I’ll go over them with you.” Fawn took the clipboard and skimmed through the printed pages. She then started to fill them out.

Most of the paperwork consisted of information about Fawn’s health. What type of childhood diseases, blood type, height, weight and any known current diseases or recent health issues. If she had a Doctor and his or her name and contact information. This part was pretty straight forward and easy to fill out.

The questions on the other hand were a little bit tricky. There were some very personal questions like: Are you in a current sexual relation?. Do you or ever have you used any mind altering drugs? How would you rate the regularity of your menstrual cycle? When was the last sexual encounter you had and was it with a member of the opposite sex? These were just a few of the questions there were three pages of these types of questions. After about forty-five minutes and some real stressful brain usage Fawn handed the clipboard back to Susan. Susan flipped through the pages and every one and a while wrote something down on the pages.

After about fifteen minutes Susan looked up from the clipboard and said to Fawn, “You appear to be qualified to become a member of our program. I just have to ask a few more questions. First it says here that you are familiar with Dr. Caleb Scull, how do you know of him and his work?” Fawn told Susan that she had talked to him last night when he did a prescreening. She also told Susan that one of her college professor had talked about him and his work in the DNA genome and that it was on the good doctor’s reputation that made her decide to try and participate in the program. Susan nodded her head and wrote something down. Susan looked up and said, “The next question is can you abstain from having sexual relations during the complete pregnancy?” Fawn thought about it only for a second and said, “If that is what is asked from me to participate in the program, then the answer is yes. I am not currently in any romantic relationships and my education is my priority right now. So my priorities dictate that I must answer yes.” Again Susan wrote down something on the printed pages.

“The next item is not a question but a legal issue. I must make you aware that after entering into a contract with the program you must abide by all set regulations. Failure to do so may occur in the forfeiture of any and all payments made to you for participation in the program. This may also cause a termination in the pregnancy to be induced by the agency. Is that clear and do you understand all the consequences?” Susan asked. Fawn replied, “What do you mean by termination of the pregnancy?”. An abortion will be performed to remove the fetus and terminate the pregnancy.” answered Susan. “I take it that is within the first twelve weeks of the pregnancy right?” asked Fawn. “No.” replied Susan. “It may be performed during any stage of the pregnancy by the decision of Doctor Scull. I will state that no pregnancy has ever been terminated within the program. It is just a legal issue that we have to abide by for clinical reasons.” Fawn replied that she understood all that had been mentioned. “Good.” replied Susan, “You have passed the first part of the interview. We only have two more parts to complete. One is a physical examination and the second is more of an intelligence test.

Are you ready to precede with those now? We can schedule them for another day if you like” “I’m ready to continue with it now.” replied Fawn.

Susan then led Fawn out of the room and down the hall to an examining room. In the examining room Dr Scull was waiting to perform the examination. He politely greeted Fawn as she entered the room by shaking her hand and thanking her for consideration to be part of the program. The examination lasted about an hour and consisted of everything from a gynecological examination to blood test and everything in between. To say the least it was a full out and out health check. After it was completed Dr. Scull reviewed the findings and told Fawn that she was in excellent health and a good candidate for the program. Fawn told Dr. Scull what she had told Susan that it was because he was involved in the program that made her mind up to be part of it. She told him that she felt safe knowing that he was overseeing the program. He advised her that he was only overseeing the medical part of it and that there were others that actually funded and oversaw the program. He thanked her for the admiration of his reputation and research and instructed her to go to Room 719 for the next part of the interview.

Fawn left the examination room and turned right and walked down the corridor till she came to Room 719. A sign on the door read “Testing Room. Please Knock Before Entering.” Fawn knocked on the door.

From the other side of the door came a male voice that said, “Come in please.” Fawn opened the door and entered the room. Sitting behind a desk was a young man wearing a white lab coat. He introduced himself as Jeff and asked Fawn to take a seat. Jeff got up from his seat and walk over to a cabinet on the opposite side of the room. From the cabinet he withdrew a laptop computer. He cross the room to where fawn was sitting and placed the laptop in front of her on the desk. He instructed Fawn to open the laptop and login using FM154 as a username and a password of SMPFM1. Fawn followed his instruction and logged in.

The laptop screen changed and a prompt box appeared instructing the user to fill out all information requested on the following screen and press the enter key to continue. The following screens asked for the usual user information; name, address, date of birth, gender, level of education and so on. Fawn completed filling in the required fields with the information. At the bottom of the screen was a prompt box instructing the user to press the enter key to continue when finished, so Fawn pressed the enter key. The screen updated and instructions appeared telling the user that the following test will consist of three parts: Math, Science, and Language. It instructed that all questions or problems should be completed and that any unanswered selections will be graded as incorrect. There was no time limit to the test but a time would be taken on how long the user took to complete the test. Fawn press the enter key and the test started.

The first section of the test was math. It consisted of problems from basic math, geometry,

trigonometry, and calculus. Fawn breezed through the math section of the test in thirty minutes spending most of the time used on the calculus problems. The science section of the test covered most of the know fields of sciences. This section of the test started off with essay questions asking what the user knew of a certain field of science and then progressed to inquire what the user thought of theoretical scientific notations such as string theory, and time travel. Fawn answered the questions to the best of her understanding of the matters.

She felt good about what she wrote down because though not an expert on the subject she felt she had a good understanding of science. It was always one of her best subjects in school. She took a little longer on completing this section because she got a little wordy with the essay questions. The final section which was language she breezed through in twenty minutes. Most of it was the breakdown of language structure defining nouns, pronouns, verbs and other parts of a sentence breakdown and their proper use. It also consisted of a few essay questions, on the history of language and the use of language as a communication tool.

Fawn completed the test in a little less than ninety minutes, and completed every question, problem, or essay. She told Jeff she had completed the test and he took the laptop. He then instructed her to return to Room 712 and see Susan. He shook her hand as Fawn stood up from her seat and he escorted her to the door and out to the corridor. He thank her for participating in the program and wished her luck in the endeavor.

He then entered back into the room and quietly closed the door. Fawn headed off down the hall to room 712.