Chapter 2

Chapter 2:
The next six weeks went by painfully fast for Elizabeth, and painfully slow for Dr. Welling. He spent most of his time working so that it would take his mind off of Elizabeth and the miracle that was growing inside of her. He stayed up late at night thinking about it, and he woke up early with it on his mind. He mentally went through the stages of growth and noted where the fetus would be.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, went along with her daily routines as usual. No matter what she did, though, the days just seemed to fly by. Her work hours were the worst, it seemed as though it was quitting time just as soon as she finally got settled in. The weekends were nearly as bad, and the days all seemed to squish together. In fact, it was due primarily to the efficiency of Dr. Welling’s secretary that Elizabeth didn’t miss her pre-op appointment. It always worried her a little bit when she signed her name to a document confirming that she understood the risks of having surgery, one of them being death.
The day of the next surgery, Dr. Welling was ecstatic. From the pre-op information, everything looked to be well within normal limits for a woman carrying a child. Her hormone levels were right on and she seemed to be doing perfectly well. He smiled warmly at her as she came through the surgery hallway on a gurney. “I am glad to see you looking so well, and to see you didn’t forget our date” he said.
“Not that I didn’t try, Dr. Welling” she replied, also with a smile. Dr. Welling could only hope that the child she had been carrying would have the same style of humor. He patted her gently on the head as his team rolled her on in to the OR suite and proceeded to dress and drape her for the surgery.
He scrubbed in and sat down ready to work. The instrumentation was pretty much the same as what he used during the first procedure with the exception of one. In his arsenal this time was a “homemade” instrument of sorts. Dr. Welling had taken a long, flexible snare commonly used during colonoscopies to retrieve samples of lesions in the colon and modified it. A thin layer of membrane was wrapped around the circle form of the snare to form a pouch. This he made ready for use and within easy reach, then started the procedure by inserting the scope back through Elizabeth’s vagina, and up to her uterus. With very little searching, he found exactly what he was looking for. On the small TV a small sac could be seen, with a tiny fetus moving inside. Dr. Welling maneuvered the scope to where he could get a good look and stopped short.
Dr. Welling was one of the type of people who prepare for anything. He had a knack for looking ahead and having a plan for any possible outcome. This time, however, he was taken completely by surprise. At first he thought that perhaps there was a problem with the camera or the image was being distorted by something on the camera. Further inspection confirmed what he had thought he had seen. There was not one, but two separate fetuses growing on the lining of Elizabeth’s uterus.
Dr. Wodrich was not available for the surgery to consult with, he had his own procedures he was performing at their office across town. Dr. Welling thought about it for only a second before making a decision. Running the retractor that he had designed through the scope, he scraped the lining of the uterus, encapsulating both fetuses within the membranous sack he had fashioned. Cautiously and gently, he pulled the pouch to the end of the scope and then pulled the scope back out and put the pouch into another “womb”.
The hand constructed womb was actually made of Elizabeth’s own cells that had been taken during the first procedure. Inside, the fetuses would have the same environment to live in after attaching to the artificial wall. There they would finish the gestational period of their lives, under the strict and constant supervision of Dr. Welling, Dr. Wodrich, and their staff. This way, they could monitor the development of the fetuses, providing any medical interventions such as drugs, vitamins and possibly even surgery, as it was needed.
Elizabeth was again awakened and taken to the PACU. Dr. Welling came in to visit her with a smile and good news. The results of the tests and the findings through surgical means had only revealed normal tissue. He apologized for the extent of procedures to confirm that everything was normal.
“Oh, Dr. Welling, I much prefer to go through all of this to find nothing, than to find something!”
Dr. Welling smiled at her warmly. “I agree, Elizabeth. I hope you never have to go through anything like this again.”
He checked on her again, and even accompanied her and her entourage when she was discharged. As she climbed out of the mandatory wheelchair and into the passenger’s seat of her sister’s car, Dr. Welling looked at her with a mix of awe, appreciation, and even a bit of adoration. She would never know what she had given him, but it was the greatest gift that he could receive from anyone. With a sigh, he walked back into the hospital to make a phone call to Dr. Wodrich.