Cloned

Chapter 3

Emily POV 

The next few weeks past in a blur. I couldn't face that she had gone. Hannah came and stayed with me for a bit. The night that Charlotte... passed away, she thought that I couldn't hear but she called the centre saying she couldn't come to work for a while because of "personal reasons". She was in another world as well. I would often walk in on her standing still with a look on her face that matched the one she had when she was about to discover something. Each time it made me more angry. Her niece and more importantly my daughter had died and she was thinking about work? I wanted her to leave but I knew that if she did I would not do anything. James would not be able to do anything. I would just stay in bed all the time. She dragged me put of bed every day and reminded me that I had my son.  

Part of me hated James and asked God every night why Charlotte was gone and James was here. He was trying to help but as 7 year olds do they don't really understand death. When I was crying he would go over and whisper to me that Charlotte was just sleeping and why was I crying when she would wake up and wasn't it nice that it was quiet? (Charlotte was always very loud and I would be often telling her to be quiet.) I then shouted at him for being so selfish. It wasn't nice quiet and I wanted her back so much then I said the worst thing a mother could possibly do: I told him that I wished he had died and Charlotte was alive instead. I instantly regretted as his face looked at me as if I had slapped him. Hannah then walked in and I knew she had heard every word. She went over to James whilst giving me a look that could have killed me.  

"James, sweetie, Mummy didn't mean any of that. She is just very upset as Charlotte is not going to be here any more and she would do anything to have her back. She does you just as much as she loved Charlotte." Cooed Hannah. I felt sick at watching her bad mouthing me like that. She was hugging him like he was her son.  

"Get away from him, Hannah, leave him alone" I shouted at her. 

"Emily! You have just told your son you wanted him dead!" She yelled back. "What did you want me to do? Agree and make him feel even worse? What kind of mother are you?" 

"I have just lost my daughter!" I screamed back "I want her back so much and you yelling at me for being an awful mother but what mother does not grief her daughter's death?"

Hannah POV 

"...what mother does not grief for her daughter's death?" Emily yelled at me. She was right and the stress she was under was incomprehensible. She resented James for surviving and pushes him away. I love James as my own son and seeing Emily push him away was destroying James. I hugged him because otherwise it would hurt him even more.  

"Emily! You just haven't lost a daughter, your son has lost his sister and I have lost a niece!" I shouted at her. She needed to get up and move on.  

"You're a geneticist ! Can't you bring her back with stem cells and whatever you spent the last 10 years studying!" She cried desperately at me. Scientifically the answer was yes but lawfully the answer was no. Part of me desperately wanted her back and I had always wanted to see a fully developed clone and it was the perfect situation. Grief stricken mother begs sister to bring back daughter... . I could dream forever but I could make it happen.  

"Emily, we can talk about this later and I might be able to let you have another daughter like Charlotte. But not in front of James. Later Emily, later." I said decisively. She nodded and hugged James whispering she was sorry and didn't mean any of it.   

A few days later 

Still Hannah POV 

We all sat down at the table. All the guests had gone home. The funeral had been hard for all of us. All of Charlotte's school friends had placed a lily on the coffin. I had returned to work and Liv had been most sympathetic. Relatives and people I had never met since their wedding had flocked and the original small funeral was now bigger than the small church could cope with.  

At the table, there was Emily, Liv and I.  

"I know you two are both stricken at Charlotte's untimely death so Hannah and I have thought of a way to help you come to terms with her death" began Liv.

"Emily, you stopped menstruating about a year ago but at the time you were happy." I said.  

"Well, I had my little girl that I always wanted" replied Emily her voice shaking.  

"Is James not enough?" I said feeling a little put out.  

"I want a girl and a boy" said Emily. She had always planned this since she was a little girl and I could remember her telling me her whole life.  

"Ok. Have you too ever heard of reproductive cloning?" Asked Liv.  

"Briefly when I tested Hannah for her degree." Replied Emily with a small smile.  

"Well. You take an empty egg from a female and you take some DNA from the person, in this case Charlotte, and implant it in the egg cell. I would then implant it in you but it we would be breaking a lot of laws but nobody has to know about it" 

"Anything to have her back" they said together.  

"Well come to the lab soon." Said Liv her eyes alive with her dream coming to life.