June 23rd, 2016
Dr Farrow comes to check up on me every now and then – he has been doing so since I was born. He's the family doctor of course, but he specialises in Jennifer-Anne-related issues, for various reasons. And before I continue, I thought I'd just nip in the bud and stop any further confusion with my name. I was Jennifer-Rose Middleton. Now, I'm Jennifer-Anne, known mainly as Anne just as I was known as Rose. It might be a hard concept to grasp at first – distinguishing between Anne and Rose, but you'll get the hang of it. In my First Life, I was Rose. Now, I'm Anne. Simple. Sometimes it's Annie, or Jenny-Anne, but nobody calls me by the latter – just distant relatives from the South who love rolling out their three-syllable hyphen names - Mary-Lou, Judy-Anne, Stacy-May, and other variations of the sort.
Dr Farrow sometimes comes to our home from a couple of miles out of Bluebeach and does check-ups on my health, ensuring I'm doing OK. You may ask why I need so much medical attention to reassure my wellbeing, but I guess it will become more apparent soon enough. I spent my childhood wondering why I needed it all, but I guess all I can really say is that having two lives really weakens the soul a little – my immune system isn't exactly the defending warrior it used to be. That's one of the many catches of living again, but it's not too much of a huge deal. I try not to worry too much about it.
Farrow turned up a few days after the night I made the discovery, slightly late for the appointment due to traffic in the city. He walked in calm and quiet as he always does, dressed professionally in his V-neck sweater over his collared shirt, his neatly pressed trousers and donning his 70's rimmed glasses. Time has really taken its toll on poor old Farrow – now seventy-three, he really should have retired a long time back. His skin has basked in too much California sun, rough like leather and wrinkled beyond any sort of skincare intervention. His hands are calloused and fingers slim, like his entire posture. He's a tall, lanky man with a slight hunchback and steady knees. He has never needed any aid in terms of movement, as far as I've known him – he still takes walks around town and keeps himself active as much as he can. He's been alone since his wife died, twenty years earlier, before my Second Life had begun. He's a good man, as far as I knew. He does his best to keep us well, like prescribing my mother's sleeping meds and advising my father on how to keep on top of his recently diagnosed arthritis.
This is the routine: he comes in, sets up his kit, injects my left forearm, and collects a sample of crimson fluid for testing whilst asking me how my days have been. I'll always reply with not bad, and I'll try to crack some sort of joke to mask the silence that comes with Farrow's undivided concentration as he examines my bodily functions. He'll try smiling and he'll nod once we're done, and he'll try keeping conversations to a minimum before leaving.
That's how it all went down the next week after the discovery, and how it happens every time he visits. This time I understood why he was here, but I just kept quiet. I acted like I knew nothing, even though I was sure my parents had seen the broken attic door, and they could sense my unease ever since they came back from their vacation. There was no hiding an elephant that big.
Farrow never had to visit us in my First Life. My parents were unaware of him at the time – they didn't know of people who could perform miracles. But boy oh boy, were they glad they found him. He's like our God, our saviour. He fixed us in ways no other doctor could, however rich or renowned. He gave me my Second Life and ensured that it was a life worth living. He saved me. I would like to say I'm thankful for that, but sometimes I'm not too sure. I waver between being so damn glad I'm alive again, to being so annoyed that I had to endure the world and all its complications and disasters for a second time. I can't really complain about much, now. This is how it is, and this is how it has always been. I'll just need to live with it.
◆ ◆ ◆
July 20th, 1999
The crying stops after about two minutes; she has either possibly fallen asleep, or fallen into an empty-eyed trance. This is around the same time that Jeff settles on the front porch, newspaper in hand. Between entering the porch and settling down, he went to grab a whisky and the local paper and use up some of his time doing something other than constantly sulking and praying that his daughter might just survive the un-survivable.
Most of the local news is as expected; soccer games, petty crime reports, trivial achievements around the local area, and political updates around town.
But something catches Jeff's eye, and it almost goes unnoticed - a small, one-column article hidden in the top corner of a page. The title reads:
UNORTHODOX SCIENTIST HELPS CLONE HAMSTERS FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH
Of course, at first Jeff doesn't think much of it. He sips his whisky, feels it burn like alkaline down his throat, and licks his finger, ready to turn the page. But something inside him stops. Something budges him to stay put, on this one page. He continues reading the article.
Californian scientist, former biologist and surgeon, Dr Vincent Farrow has teamed up with other specialists to try and find a cure for a number of illnesses, using the controversial process of cloning. The scientist, who obtained a PhD at Harvard University back in 1965 aged just twenty-three, has been working with lab rats and hamsters during his duration of research, has begun replicating the DNA of 'donor' hamsters, using their body cells, and inserting it into the empty egg cells of 'surrogates'. With the right amount of electrical stimulation, the exact copy of the donor is created. However, it should be noted that this is an extremely gruelling process with high risks of failure - so the question is; do the benefits of the potentiality of curing diseases outweigh the risks of life being 'meddled' with in the name of science?
Jeff closes the newspaper after reading that article before staring out into the horizon over the suburban rooftops around him. The fantasy that has erupted within his mind seems so far-fetched and absurd, but there's a part of him that cannot let go of it. It's a fantasy worth holding on to, even if it means nothing at all.
YOU ARE READING
Jennifer Two
Teen Fiction[WINNER OF A WATTY AWARD 2019 IN THE LITERARY FICTION CATEGORY!!!!] "We always want to know what the dead would tell us if they could tell us anything at all. We invent ghosts. Ouija boards. We make mediums and psychics stinking rich, getting them t...
