Subject: [OTL]: [Robin] In The Blood [2:11] Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 07:02:12 -0700 (PDT) From: D Benway In The Blood [2:11] Saturday, April 28 drawn from the vein by Benway This story borrows some Bat-characters from DC for not-for-profit use. This story is not recommended for sensitive or innocent readers. __________________________________________________________________ I can see things that other people can't see. Not things that aren't there, but things that are. Things that are very hard to see, patterns that are there, patterns that don't call attention to themselves. I'm better at it than Bruce, but he's much better at deduction and strategy. I can pick the right move by instinct, almost without thinking. He always thinks, and always has the right move as soon as he's reasoned it out. He also has years of experience to rely on, which gives him an edge over me. He knows there are patterns that should never be looked at up close. It's a Saturday night on one of the few weekends when I'm home from school. I'd spent the afternoon with Ives and his new boyfriend, and they were good together. Better than Steph and me, anyhow. I don't know why I'd asked her along. She lives nearby, but we've both agreed that it's over. We had a fight. As usual, we both lost. I'm pissed off about the fight, but I don't let it show. I never let it show. It bothers my Dad. He always thinks I'm hiding something, which I am, but not what he imagines. He really doesn't have much of an imagination. We have wine with dinner. I only have a glass, but Dana and Dad finish off the bottle and start on a second one. I have the feeling they've had a fight and are making up. I don't remember him fighting with Mom, but then there were those times when I'd wake up and find Dad making the breakfast and smiling a lot more than usual and telling me that Mom had gone off to see Aunt Amy and wouldn't be back for a few days. I used to wonder why she didn't tell me she was going. I was only four at the time. Dana is talking about Dylan again, and how lucky they were that he has no defects. She's heard that there is a 1 in 400 chance of carrying the gene for cystic fibrosis, and was wondering why she didn't know anyone who had the disease. My father has a background in law and knows next to nothing about science and Dana's education consisted of a lot of time spent in the gym and the pool (her lips move when she's reading the TV guide, but she is very sweet and understanding on all the family stuff), so I want to reassure her. I tell her that the gene is recessive, and so both parents need to have the gene in order to transmit the disease. That would make a 1 in 160000 chance that a child would inherit both genes and catch the disease, but I don't tell her that by her age, most of the kids with the disease would be dead. She nods (I don't explain all the assumptions), and says she is so glad that she'd asked to have an amniocentesis, just to be certain. A red flag goes up. Steph had had one of those when she was pregnant. Her child had come up clear. They told her that there was a small risk to the fetus from the test, but her mother talked her into it since the father was nowhere to be found. There is no way that a doctor would have given Dana an amniocentesis when they could do a DNA test on both parents. Dad is playing with his knife and fork, like he always does when he gets nervous. His eyes are darting from her to me, and back again. I ask no more questions, and go upstairs after we finish the coffee. I go to get a new set of towels for my bathroom, like I do every night before I go to bed. They're kept in the linen closet, in the master bedroom, next to Dad's bathroom. I can hear Dad and Dana downstairs, talking about something. I slip into the bathroom and check the medicine cabinet. Viagra, just as I thought. Engler Clinic Pharmacy, not CVS or Walgreen's. I put the fresh towels in my bathroom and go downstairs to help them finish the dishes. I tell them I'm going to take an early night, which is true. I need more than 5 hours sleep at least one night a week, and this is Steph's weekend to be on patrol in Gotham. I use my laptop to hack into the Engler Clinic records, weaving around their firewall as if it isn't even there. Since they do abortions, I make a mental note to send them an anonymous note in the mail, explaining how easy it was to get in, and providing a list of their home addresses and unlisted phone numbers. I don't know where I stand on abortion after what Steph went through, but I do know where I stand on killing people who have been born. The clinic records are a mess, and it takes me almost an hour to find all the pieces. I can only go back five years, but this proves to be more than enough. My father has Viagra for the obvious reason, but Dana has had an in-vitro fertilization, with sperm from a sperm bank. They didn't tell me that. The reason? Sterility. My father was sterile, on account of an adolescent glandular infection. My father was 36 when I was born. I go to Yahoo and search on in-vitro fertilization. The first successful procedure took place five years before I was born. I check the internet yellow pages for clinics. I go to the sites. The Engler Clinic is ten years old, and most of the clinics aren't much older except for the one that claimed to be the first. The first was the Thomas Wayne Medical Centre, right here in the Heights. [next: Saturday, May 12]