Katherine Carlyle

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I was made in a small square dish. The temperature was 37 degrees Celsius, like the inside of a human body. Like a womb. The dish had four shallow wells or indentations, and the word NUNC was stamped along one edge. My mother’s eggs were placed in the wells, no more than three in each, and then my father’s sperm was introduced, the sperm allowed to seek the eggs in a simulacrum of the reproductive process. The ingredients were all scrupulously harvested, meticulously screened. Something of hers, something of his — a precious pinch of each. Pale-blue figures drifted high above, like clouds.

Within a matter of hours I was transferred to a solution or “culture medium,” where I was supposed to “cleave.” Medium, cleave — these are the technical terms. During the next five days I divided into a blastocyst, consisting of approximately sixty cells. My progress was monitored by the figures dressed in blue. Sometimes they reached down and removed embryos that were judged to be nonviable. Not me, though. I remained untouched. This happened on the fourth floor of a West London hospital, in the Assisted Conception Unit.

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