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medical history. She presented with asymptomatic ally blocked fallopian tubes.”

Reliable historian?” Ken questioned as he chewed the inside of his lip.

“Completely,” Marissa said.

“Negative chest X-ray’,” “Completely normal.”

“Eye problems?”

“None.”

“Lymph nodes?”

“Negative,” Marissa said with emphasis.

“Except for the blocked tubes, the patient is completely normal and healthy.”

“GYN history normal?” Ken asked.

“Yup!” Marissa said.

“Well, that’s weird,” Ken admitted.

“TB gets to a fallopian tube via the bloodstream or the lymphatics. If it’s TB, then there has to be a nidus somewhere. And it doesn’t look like fungus without some hyphae or something. I’d still say TB is the leading contender. Anyway, I’ll do some additional stains…”

“Marissa!” called a voice, bringing Marissa back to the present.

She opened her eyes. It was Dr. Arthur.

“Dr. Wingate is about to inject the local anesthesia. We don’t want you to suddenly jump.”

Marissa nodded. Almost immediately she felt a number of points of stinging pain, but they faded quickly and she went back to her musing, remembering her panicked visit to an internist the same day that she’d seen Ken. But a complete work-up had failed to find anything wrong except for a positive PPD test, suggesting that she indeed had had

TB.

Although Ken tried numerous other tests on Marissa’s slide, he found no organisms, TB or otherwise. But he stuck by his original diagnosis of a tuberculous infection of the fallopian tube despite Marissa’s inability to explain how she could have picked up such a rare illness.

“Dr. Wingate!” a harried voice called. Marissa’s attention was again brought back to the present. She turned her head. Mrs.

Hargrave was at the ultrasound-room door.

“Can’t you see I’m busy, for chrissake?” Dr. Wingate snapped.

“I’m afraid there has been an emergency.”

“I’m doing a bloody egg retrieval!” Dr. Wingate shouted, venting some of his frustration on Mrs. Hargrave.

“Very well,” Mrs. Hargrave said as she backed out of the door.

“Ah, there we go!” Dr. Wingate said with satisfaction. His eyes were glued to the cathode-ray-tube screen.

“Want me to see what the emergency is?” Dr. Arthur asked.

“It can wait,” Dr. Wingate said.

“Let’s get some eggs.”

For the next half hour, time seemed to crawl. Marissa was sleepy but unable to sleep under the torturous probing.

“All right,” Dr. Wingate said at last.

“That’s the last of the visible follicles. Let me take a look at what we’ve gotten.”

Laying the probe aside and stripping off his gloves, Dr. Wingate disappeared with the nurse-technician into the other room to examine the aspirate under a microscope.

“Are you okay?” Dr. Arthur asked Marissa.

Marissa nodded.

Within a few minutes, Dr. Wingate came back into the room.

He had a broad smile.

“You were a very good girl,” he said.

“You produced eight fine-looking eggs.”

Marissa breathed out audibly and closed her eyes. Although she was happy about getting eight eggs, it hadn’t been a good morning. She felt drugged and exhausted and, with the stress of the procedure gone, Marissa soon lapsed into a troubled, drugged sleep. She was only vaguely aware of being moved to a gurney and being transported across the glass-enclosed walkway to the clinic’s overnight ward. She woke up briefly to help switch herself from the gurney to a bed where she at last sank into a deeper, Valium-induced sleep.

Of all the sundry responsibilities and duties of running the Women’s Clinic, Dr. Norman Wingate’s heart rested firmly with his work associated directly with the biological part of the in vitro fertilization unit. As an MD, PhD, cellular biology held the strongest intellectual appeal. And as he gazed at Marissa’s ova through the lenses of his dissecting microscope, he was filled with pleasure and utter awe. There, within