Excerpt from Courage of the Heart

He bent over her and picked her up, cradling her in his arms. Adam tried to memorize every feeling, the scent from her hair, her weight in his arms, and the way she opened her eyes and smiled just before she wound her arms around his neck.

“Hmmm… what time is it?” Her voice was sleepy.

“After three.”

“How are you ever going to get up in the morning?”

He was amused by the way her words slurred. “I’ll go in late.” He walked into their bedroom and placed her gently on the bed.

Adam helped her while she fumbled into a night shirt and crawled under the blankets. Then he went to his side of the bed and stripped, leaving his clothing on the floor. He got under the covers and pulled her body up against his, he kissed her on the top of her head and whispered “G’night.” Before he reached to turn out his night table lamp, he stopped to watch her sleeping in their bed… another memory for him to store.

Surprisingly Adam had woken early after all. He quietly got out of bed without disturbing her, took the folded paper from his pocket and took a pair of pants with him to put on after he left the room. In the kitchen he plugged in the pot of coffee that Davie had left prepared and leaned against the counter to read the report. In all test groups, ‘589APPLE’ had significantly improved the healthy development of the fetus in-utero by directing nutrients and necessary vitamins to the growing embryo. Various laboratory animals were used throughout the stages. Thanks to the administration of ‘589APPLE’ hundreds of healthy baby rats were born during this testing period with an improvement of nearly seventy-five-percent in overall development, survival and general health over the control group which did not receive ‘589APPLE’. Many more test groups were used in the studies, most of them showed extremely high neo-natal success rates.

However, Adam noted, the more complex the animal in the test group, another statistic registered. By the time pregnant laboratory monkeys were given the drug, while most of the babies were born healthy, the maternal health began to suffer with one fatality attributed to malnutrition. The human test group consisted of twenty-five pregnant females who were given the drug; four mothers died within twenty-four hours of birth, two died prior to birth and their healthy babies were delivered by Cesarean section, seven more were hospitalized suffering the effects of starvation and one more died within six months after. The summary at the bottom of the report cited the fifty-percent of human mothers who suffered illness or fatality after taking ‘589APPLE’ during at least five months of the gestation period.

Autopsy results of the fatalities showed that not only did the drug direct more of the ingested nutrients to the fetus, but it also ‘attached’ itself to the digestive track and prohibited any significant nourishment from being absorbed into the mother’s body. A recommendation was made to Dr. Bryan Chapman, the Vice President of Regularity Affairs of the pharmaceutical company, that the formulation of the drug be examined and altered to reduce this risk to the mothers. The author of the summary, who signed only his initials, proposed that production of ‘589APPLE’ be postponed indefinitely.

Adam was dismayed that this supposedly beneficent drug could have such devastating effects. He also was aware that he had made it possible for this drug, with its current potentially lethal formulation, to be manufactured and distributed in third-world countries and on the black market everywhere. This drug had the potential to turn a growing baby into an insidious parasite that could kill its mother. There was no choice left, he had to stop it.

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