The End of Men(51)

The way they look at me, you’d think I’d stolen the children for myself. A few weeks ago, on a particularly low day, I had a Skype call with Amanda Maclean, the Amanda Maclean, about the program. She was interested in the possibilities of implementing it in Scotland. “You don’t tell the women you’re taking the babies?” she repeated after me in a horrified voice. She made me feel very small.

The alarm on my calendar goes off. Time for ward rounds. As I walk down the corridor from my office to the first floor of nurseries I’m struck, as I often am, by the scale of what we have created in such a short time. It’s a controversial topic, I appreciate that. We take babies away from their parents—regardless of the parents’ thoughts on the matter—and raise them the best we can without those children being touched or in the same room as another human without a hazmat suit on. Other psychologists in the medical community criticize me for engaging in “unethical practices.” Excuse me while I roll my eyes onto the floor, but it’s ethical to keep children alive. Lots of people have started asking if a child’s survival is worth the emotional cost to the mother and baby of forcibly taking the child away. To my surprise, a lot of people would respond to that question with a resounding no.

The first floor of the building is full of the most recent additions, generally babies from newborn to four weeks. The first on my list is a single mother, Melissa Innes. She’s standing, just about, still hunched over from her C-section, looking like death. I wish she was sitting down.

“Melissa?”

Slow blinks and then the gearshift I can see happening in her mind to engage with an adult in conversation.

“Let’s take a seat, shall we?” We sit in one of the consulting rooms—it looks like every therapist’s office I’ve ever seen. Slightly shabby carpet, tissues carefully placed on a table in the middle of two chairs, clock in easy view, basic floral print on one wall to “brighten the place up.” It’s truly heinous, but our budget isn’t endless so it’ll have to do.

“I see you haven’t filled out the questionnaire you were given. Do you think you’ll manage to do that today?”

“I looked at it,” she says quietly. “It’s stupid.”

“What do you think is stupid about it?”

“You don’t think it’s stupid to ask a woman who has just had her son cut out of her stomach, kidnapped and kept in a locked room away from her whether she’s sad?”

I swallow. I wish they wouldn’t describe it like that.

“You son is alive right now. He is in a safe, warm, Plague-free environment. You can go in and see him with a hazmat suit on.”

“But I can’t touch him.”

“Not without the suit, no.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before you did it?”

I’ve been asked this question before and I’ll be asked it again. I prepare my answer, the same one I’ve given over one hundred times. “There is a risk that, given the highly emotional state most women are in prior to birth and with the danger of the Plague, that decisions would be taken that would later be regretted. The preservation of the lives of as many boys as possible was, and is, our priority.”

“Did someone write that for you?”

She’s smart. Pale and unsteady, but smart.

“No, but it’s not the first time I’ve been asked that question.”

“Do you have children?”

Christ, here we go.

“No, I don’t.”

Melissa nods knowingly. “That makes more sense.”

I know I should nod in a calm way, but I loathe the way she looks as though she’s just gained some extraordinary insight about me. “What makes more sense?”

“The way you’ve set this whole thing up.”

“What do you mean?”

“The mothers, the parents, we’re just an irritation to you. You didn’t tell us what you were planning, even though most of us would probably have agreed if you had. You cut us open and took our children away from us and then you act like we should be grateful to you. You don’t understand a thing. You’re a psychologist, right? Well, you know what they say. Nobody’s crazier than a shrink.”

It’s just the meds she’s on. Breathe. She just had major surgery. Breathe. She is a twenty-one-year-old single mother who has never held her son. Breathe. Fuck it.

“Well, do you want to take him then?”

For the first time Melissa looks taken aback and I take a disproportionate amount of satisfaction from her surprise.

“Go on, if you’re so determined that we’ve done this all wrong, and I’m wrong, and this program is wrong, I’ll use my key, open the door and you can go in and get your son. You have a one in ten chance he’ll be immune and survive. Good luck!”

I’m standing, holding the door open looking, I suspect, a bit deranged. If I’m asked about this, I’ll have to put it down to a new experimental technique and hope no one thinks I’m having a nervous breakdown.

“I don’t want to,” Melissa finally says.

“And why don’t you want to go and get your son?” Silence. Happy to fill it. “Because then your son will almost certainly die. So really, we haven’t kidnapped him, have we? You must want him to be here as much as I do.”