Ethan Dunn in the last nine months had been living a very strange, completely unusual life even beyond his usual experiences working in such a company as one that devoted an entire wing to reversing the aging process. Whereas before he had entertained the idea of selling the Chronos Virus to various other wealthy millionaires and billionaires who like Carl also feared the impending arrival of the grim reaper and his scythe, seeing for himself - when Melissa showed up, ranting, raving and almost delusionally talking up what happened to her - put an end to that idea. He had no intention of putting THAT any further out into the world.
Any concept of it was banished from his mind, and he made sure the remaining samples were locked away in a safe in his personal possessions, double locked behind two safe deposit doors in his attic - or otherwise destroyed. Ethan tried to make sure that he lived his life as best he could. The board of directors were eager to sweep this whole issue under the rug as best they could - they framed Carl as simply having "disappeared" off the face of the Earth, gave Melissa her slip with a generous donation so she didn't let slip anything that happened, and reassigned Ethan to another wing of the corp where his talents with retrovirus design and chemical assignment were just as easily applied...
And gave him just as well another charitable donation, as well as a closely veiled threat to never speak a word of what had happened, or things would become "vastly more unpleasant". And Ethan did not doubt that they would be capable of acting on those threats. So for now he functioned as a doctor and MD officially, but a corporate chemist and bioengineer unofficially.
He had not exactly been in contact with Melissa, they had not parted on the most ideal terms. She maintained she loved this, that it was her new chance to be a mother - a "mommy" as she put it in her deluded and possibly delirious state. Ethan had called her insane, that her lucidity was gone from the trauma of that sudden and inexplicable transformation resultant from the virus's interaction with breastmilk, and both left quietly and fuming at one another.
As of now, Ethan was doing what he loved most outside the office - lifting weights. He warmed up his elbows - you couldn't be too careful at his age - and his arms, chest and shoulders just as well. He was rather pleased by how little aches and pains he suffered through as opposed to some of the other men around the gym. Wallace, one of the men about five years older than him and a thin, gray haired older fellow trying to put on muscle, complimented him, "300 lbs bench press? At your age?"
"What can I say?" Ethan chuckled, "The product of a lifetime of good eating habits, persistence with fitness, muscle building, and macronutrient tracking."
"I never had the patience for that kind of shit, you know," Wallace commented, "Fuck, now I wish I did. You're a really built guy, Ethan. Kinda wish I had a second chance."
Ethan blinked at that, almost having a flashback to that very same kind of mentality that resulted in a giggling, delirious Melissa approaching him in his lab, raving about her baby. Her baby who used to be Carl. Who had been against his will regressed all the way back to fucking infancy because Ethan the ever-screw up had gotten his protein chains and enzyme layers mixed up. While he had pinpointed the exact cause, it was small and cold comfort to someone who had seen his life's work turned into ash and dust in his mouth.
Maybe the fuckers from college were right all along. Maybe he was just some dumb jock all along.
Ethan pounded out his frustrations after politely saying "I had better get back to my workout!" to Wallace. He heard the bang and clang of the 2 plates and 1 35 lbs on each side, along with the tiny 2.5 lbs on each side as well. He could almost in the heat of the moment lose track of his reps as he pounded through the set. Muscles burning and heat churning through his body. Ethan grunted as he registered his shoulders starting to ache a little, but he was so far from feeling good.
He pounded out three more reps - letting out angry gasps as he reracked the weights after he was done. He ran a hand through his slightly thinner hairline as he shrugged his shoulders, approaching the mirrors on the walls of the gym. Watching his tremendous muscular chest, brawny biceps and triceps, and strong forearms sweltering under the glistening sight of his sweat. "I'm getting fucking older."
"Aren't we all?" Wallace commented wryly. "You're just going slower. Maybe try some Rogaine?"
"I'm not doing some fucking Rogaine." Ethan cussed under his breath as he went off to do some curls. He still felt like he needed to do more just to deal with the residual frustrations. It was like everything he had dealt with was only just now surging back up. All the issues he had denied, said weren't there, all were just...occurring to him now. How fucked it was that the board of directors could influence the police investigation into Carl's disappearance. How they could just get him declared missing. How Carl had felt hope he could survive his health crises for the first time - for the first fucking time - and what happens?
The cure turns him into a fucking infant and then makes him an unborn fucking child, and drives the mother batshit fucking crazy.
Before Ethan even realized it, here he was curling 90 lbs, biceps swollen with blood and veins popping as he brought the heavy weight from the top of his quads to the height of his shoulders. Again and again he pounded out reps, each time shouting the number he was on a little louder. He could hear his phone, in his drawstring workout bag resting by his side, ringing away. Ring ring ring. Ring ring ring. Ring ring ring. Ring fucking ring ring...
"FIFTEEN!!!!"
Ethan dropped the weight on the rack and quickly reached down to pull out his phone to see who it was. He sighed and started to calm down upon seeing it was his clinic. His day job. His normal job. Where he did stuff that didn't turn people into infants, and get paid off for his silence.
He had missed the call due to being pissed off. He shook his head and knew that was on him. He needed to get better about that. Wasn't that why he hit the gym so much? Doing so helped him deal with the issues. Deal with the temper, deal with knowing what he did even so inadvertently. He rolled his head around and grimaced. He hit the call back button on his phone. "Hello, this is Ethan speaking? Sorry about that, you caught me at the gym, Doris."
He could tell it was one of the desk ladies at the clinic. Probably this was some health issue. Someone wanted to see him. But Doris was quiet for a minute. She was his confidant. The one person at the clinic he told most of what happened to. He knew it would get him in trouble - but he needed SOMEONE. ANYONE. He needed the reliability and presence of a confidant. She had sworn on her life and her mother's grave she would not tell a soul - even as her expression had grown ever more horrified.
Doris was quiet for a moment on the other end even after she picked up. She audibly gulped on the other end of the phone. "E-Ethan...? What---What was the name? The name of that woman? The one who had become suddenly pregnant due to---to that effect of your serum?" Doris seemed shaken, and Ethan felt his heart sink. Why would she be asking...?
"Doris? Doris what's going on?" Ethan asked in a shaky tone. "Her name's...Her name was Melissa. Melissa Duchovny."
"Melissa Duchovny just...just called in, Ethan." Doris said in a flat tone, though she was very obviously scared, "She says she's pregnant...and she's due. She feels like she's going to give birth. And she wants to give birth...at our clinic."
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
Ethan felt faint, like everything that he had tried so hard to deal with, to push back, to never again have to reckon with...all this was now returning to him again. He had never wanted to see Melissa's face EVER again. Not after seeing her so joyfully proclaim herself a mother while dancing around with the remains of Carl's last changes evident on her clothes. The visual in his head of an infant turning into an unborn one of many nightmares Ethan had had up until that point.
His ethic as a doctor was to provide help. To assist. To make sure nobody was hurt. And he sure as fuck hadn't lived that just nine months ago. "How---How long ago---?"
"She's still here." Doris was obviously scared. Melissa was a pregnant woman whose mental state was presently unknown to her except her history of going kind of nuts when Carl pulled up inside of her and turned into her unborn child...and Doris...Doris was a fat, middle-aged woman with short cut hair, unable to move very fast, and she didn't know how much danger she was in. What could happen as a result of such a child being born. "We put her up in one of the rooms for expectant mothers. She's...she's going to give birth soon, Ethan. Please...be here soon."
"Wear disinfectant gear. Don't let any tissue, blood, or other bodily fluid get on you. I don't know what effect this would have, but I'm not taking ANY chances." Ethan furiously left the gym in short order. Not even bothering to change out of his gym clothes as he headed off. He got in his car and almost broke the speed limit quite a few times as he headed toward the clinic. He had no intention of letting Doris face this alone.
His eyes were almost in a sense of tunnel vision. Focused on the concept of getting there. Getting to his clinic. Hopefully this time he could---he could do something. Do anything. Help Carl---Melissa---someone, anyone even.
He was not going to fuck up again. He couldn't afford to, not with his record the way it was, and with all this hanging so heavily over him. He had to get it on, get it done, move on and do his job as a doctor.
"I just hope," Ethan whispered to himself, "That she's doing okay. That nothing is going on with the birth. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if---if my selfishness resulted in---in anything---"
By the time he got there and started pulling on a doctor's coat over his gym clothes, he knew he'd need to wash the coat after he was done. He could see by the time he got in that it seemed the situation had progressed. Doris, having some experience in nursing herself before getting the job as a desk lady, had sprung into action to at least help deal with the issue at hand. Ethan himself got on some sterile, disinfectant gear to go in and see for himself.
He could hear Melissa screaming long before he could see her. She seemed like every bit a normal woman going through childbirth. Screaming, that is. Screaming and crying and gripping the sides of the bed she was on. So tightly that Ethan worried she might lose her fingernails. He could see blood dripping from her hands as she started the tumultuous process of giving birth. They hardly seemed like the right place for this kind of thing. So maybe, Ethan considered, Melissa had found out this was where he did business. Chose him, for some unknown reason, to help.
He didn't pretend to know.
The doctor almost didn't want to know. All he knew right now was that she was just another patient in one of the most trying and unforgiving times in a woman's life. And she---she needed his help.
Doris was doing her part, directing the nurses and assistant doctors in their relevant tasks as he arrived. "Glad you could join us." She remarked. She was visibly sweating under the disinfectant gear, and yet she did not dare remove it. The screams were obviously taking their toll on her. You just never got used to this kind of thing.
"Are there any abnormal or aberrant qualities to be observed in the birth?" Ethan asked as he started dishing out directions. He was well studied - in this field as well as many others. He saw it as a necessity. Maybe he was gifted with prophecy as well as misguided genius.
"None," Doris answered as the assistants and nurses rushed around. They were entirely too busy to notice the odd missives between the head doctor and the desk lady. "We've not noticed a single thing outside of the fact it seems her son is...pretty strong. He really wants to be born."
Ethan bit his lip, and wondered if that was a sign. He hoped against hope that this would not be anything too unusual. He made sure the disinfectant gloves and scrubs were all on there on him securely. His sweat from the gym mixing with the sweat from the procedure. Ahh fuck on top of everything else he was gonna need a shower.
The birth was commencing...and Ethan could immediately see something was wrong.
As the child was born out of her, Melissa sighed, "He's...he's out. He's finally out of me. Ohh, oh Carl..." But as Ethan looked at the child he could see that the child seemed...older than it should be. The child was indeed a male of Caucasian descent, as Carl should've been. But now it seemed he had wisps of wavy black hair on the crest of his head. He was wailing, strong, loud and determined. There seemed to be an intellect there that surprised Ethan. A flash of recognition in those infant eyes. Except that didn't look like a newborn...
"Out, out! Doris and I will handle this." The mystified attendants and assistants, nurses and all, rushed out of the room at his command. Ethan watched the child, still united to his mother by his umbilical cord, seem to start tugging at it with as much strength as he could manage. The child had Melissa's eyes now, it seemed like the child might be a combination of Carl and Melissa's genetics. In some strange way Carl was almost his own father.
The child looked bigger still than usual. Almost a year old at this rate, and tugging at the umbilical cord some more. The child cried loudly as he looked at the cord still stuck to his belly. Doris stepped in at that and snipped the umbilical cord before hoisting the surprisingly heavy infant up in her arms and then handing him off to Melissa. Both Ethan and Doris stared at one another long after Melissa started cooing and giggling at the sight of her child. Her increasingly older child, who seemed suddenly a deal more calm now.
No freshly born child was that quiet.
And Ethan could tell, as the child turned his head, with increasingly many wavy black hairs, to look at him, that there was definite recognition there. Carl? Was Carl really in there? Had he somehow in some way been conscious throughout his time inside of Melissa's body? Was he really aware and awake and KNEW all of what went on in there? The sheer possibilities were both mindnumbing and thought provoking - though more than a little insane.
And as Ethan watched, he could see the child getting bigger still. Cooing, chuckling, trying to get up and move. But still unable to do so. Carl (?) still tried over and over to get up, only to be defeated by his developing body. He sobbed a little before nuzzling up to his mother. "Carl? Carl is that...? Is that really you in there?" Ethan asked.
The child, growing older it seemed moment by moment, turned his head to look at Ethan. He could tell the child was trying to speak...but that too was not quite easy at this point. Ethan wondered then, as he looked to Doris, how much older? How much more would Carl change?