Chapter 14: Monty’s verdict

We had an early appointment on Monday morning to see my Doctor. Monty was his usual cheerful optimistic self and he soon ploughed into the results of the tests that he had received so far.

“Well, Drew and Kay-Lynn,” Monty beamed at us sat in his surgery office, after he had precautionately locked the door behind us, “I can see from the huge block of volcanic crystal perched perilously on this young lady’s tiny ring finger that I can address the pair of you as a fully-fledged couple, is that right?”

We both happily nodded in response.

“Good,” he said, “my congratulations to you both, I’m delighted that I can speak to you in a manner which regards you as both sharing in the congratulations of your coming children. That is not always the case, I assure you. We’ll start with the good news, because the good news is that the chromosome tests reveal that they are both males, which is a good sign bearing in mind your family history, Drew. The normal checks for genealogical defects have revealed no problems, another relief. The tests on your blood sample also shows that your blood is healthy and I am confident you are both going to have healthy twins. Now Drew, if you get up on the treatment table and pull your shirt up, we’ll have another look and take our time to see what is developing. It’s the best we can do at the moment without a CAT scan.”

“Ah, I’ve been thinking about that, Monty,” I said, “If you had access to a private CAT scan device, could you work it?”

“Yes, it is easy enough,” Monty said, “but usually the technicians are keen on maintaining their jobs so they won’t let us use it without them present. I expect Kay-Lynn knows how to use them too, don’t you?”

“Theoretically, yes, we covered that earlier in my training but I’d still like to run through all the buttons etcetera, but yes, the operation is not dangerous as far as radiation is concerned, unlike operating Xray machines.” Kay said.

“So where would we have to go to get private access Drew?” Monty asked, “We do have one here but we had to run a charity drive a couple of years ago in order to afford it.”

“What if I told you I had one sitting around doing nothing at home?”

“How can you possibly have one at home, just lying about?” Monty retorted. “These machines cost hundreds of thousands.”

“My building used to be owned and virtually rebuilt by a Russian Oligarch and in one of the basement floors he kitted out a hospital, with several wards, treatment rooms, an operating theatre and what looks to me to look like a whole body scanner, which I assume in my ignorance is possibly a CAT scanner. It’s been down there untouched since before the Ukraine war and sanctions against the Russian Oligarchs, which was how my uncle was able to buy it, lock stock and barrel.”

“I really will have to look at it, but first of all let’s get your examination under way and I’ll add my other thoughts on your results,” Monty said, as he got ready to operate the ultrasound device on my belly bump, “Now, we can see the twins, they look good for their age, developing nicely, about 10/11 weeks maybe. We can see the umbilical cords and the womb encasing them but there really is no sign of any developing birth canal which means a c-section around 2 weeks or so before the due date.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“Around 6 months from now, March at a guess, Drew,” Monty said, “but we’ll monitor the sizes of the twins and reassess as necessary. Usually we can work out conceptions from what days the mother remembers when she had ... relations. But in your case, it seems your body, like your unborn siblings before you, had elements of female traits beneath the male ones on the surface. Perhaps your body’s biological clock alarm started ringing as you were in you mid-30s and showed no signs of settling down and producing offspring and decided to preempt you. Deep into our ancestry, when we were amphibians we may have had the ability to self-fertilise, as some female amphibians are still able to do today when males are scarce. Somehow your body’s biological clock produced sperm in your testes and fertilised an egg delivered to your new organ, the uterus. As sometimes happens, a fertilised egg divides and you get more than one baby.”

Monty took a number of notes of measurements and took some stills of the ultrasound images onto Kay’s medical files for examining more closely later.

When finished, Monty asked, “Are you going home directly from here?”

“Yes,” I replied, Kay needs to sleep between her night shifts, why?”

‘You are my only appointment for the day and I was going to drive straight home to Exmouth for the rest of the week, but I’d like to look at this scanner and the operating theatre as soon as possible. If they are usable it would put a completely fresh change of organising everything.”

“Okay, come with me in my car,” I said, “Kay can go to bed, I’ll show you round—”

“Hey, Drew,” Kay interrupted, “I want to see this hidden hospital too. I can sleep later, I’m too wide awake already and I’ll never get to sleep if I know you two are poking around in the basement levels without me!”

“Okay,” I said, “we do what Kay says, we inspect the hospital level together, then while she goes up to sleep, I’ll drop you off back at the surgery. Does that sound a plan, Monty? ... Kay?”

I got two ‘yeses’ in reply, so I finished dressing and we left the surgery with Monty and drove home through the busy streets of Kensington & Chelsea and I parked in one of my spaces in the garage. The three of us headed for the special lift that needed my key fob to get into, Kay and I both had fobs on our key rings.

In the lift, the control panel was relatively new and only showed three basement buttons. Below that panel was another panel held in place by four screws. Using the screwdriver blade on the vintage Swiss Army Knife I always carried (it had belonged to my late grandfather), I unscrewed three of the screws and the panel naturally swung away held by the remaining screw, to reveal three more control buttons, marked, ‘B4’, ‘B5’ and ‘B6’. I pressed B6 and the lift descended smoothly and rapidly and the lift doors opened at the bottom.

The lobby outside the lift was in darkness but as I led the way out of the lift, movement sensors automatically switched on the overhead lights, revealing stark plain beige walls and several doors leading off the lobby, with direction signs still up on the walls written in Russian.

I pointed to the Cyrillic script representing the word “Bol’niysa”, meaning hospital and went through the door in that direction.

“So what’s in the other directions,” Kay asked, pointing to the doors on the other two walls.