The Clinic: An absolutely unputdownable and addictive psychological thriller packed with twists by Cara Reinard

Author:Cara Reinard [Reinard, Cara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bookouture
Published: 2024-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-EIGHT

EMILY

SAMPLE

Monday Afternoon

“Well?” I ask Ralphie as I throw my white lab coat back over my body. Ally’s words, I trust you, Emily, are haunting me into action.

Why can’t she just hate me for being her husband’s ex-girlfriend like every other hot-blooded woman in the world? My feelings of obligation to Ally are way stronger than they should be. But I do not like to disappoint people who are counting on me, and especially at work.

“It just arrived. Your man pulled through,” Ralphie says, pointing to a plastic cup of sperm labeled—Holiday. Ralphie leans back in his chair, hands entwined behind his head, grin spread across his face. He and I will have a good laugh about this someday, but today is not the day.

“Thank God. There’s still hope. You didn’t tell Batey, right?”

“Nope.” Ralphie is still cheesing.

“Stop that.”

“What?” he asks.

“That,” I say, pointing to his smug face. “Okay, I have to get to work.”

It’s well past two o’clock now.

“Even though today has been very entertaining, do you mind if I bail? I went through all of the charts and labeled the samples. My daughter has a basketball game tonight, and it’s out of town,” Ralphie says.

“Do your thing. I’m going to be a sperm-injecting queen for the rest of the day.” I wipe the sweat off my brow, wash and glove my hands, and then begin to prep my station. Temporary relief floods my body.

“That would sound so fucked-up if we didn’t do what we did. I mean, because a lot of ladies in town could tell you, that I am, in fact, a sperm-injecting king.” Ralphie chuckles.

I crack a smile. “Yeah, yeah. Get out of here,” I yell.

I’m all alone in the lab now, and anxious to transform these eggs into beautiful embryos. Beautiful Holiday embryos. All brown hair, and brown eyes, and wide smiles, and some Garner-like dimples if they’re really lucky.

But I decide to check on my eggs first.

Placing them under the microscope makes me extremely nervous.

How many have survived the freeze? The statistics for survival is around seventy-five percent, so I’m hoping I have at least three good eggs from my thaw of four.

The first egg calms my nerves. It’s absolutely perfect—gorgeously round with no dark imperfections. The zona, or outside barrier of the egg, is of ideal thickness. It looks like a lovely little, clearly colored circle with a rubber band skimming its outside perimeter. When I discuss my work with nonclinical people, I describe the zona as the shell of the egg. It holds all of the cells in their place until it’s time for them to multiply and grow.

The rest of my eggs look identical to the first one under the microscope. I couldn’t be more pleased. They’ve all survived!

Survivor. It’s a constant whisper in my ear. I am a survivor, and my eggs are survivors too.

Their cell division isn’t quite where I want it to be for sperm injection yet, so I place them back in their lab dish. A couple more hours and they’ll be ready for the architect’s fine seed.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.