Chapter 9 #2
Maggie wonders if he can hear her heart pounding.
A few hours with Ingrid Parker, every week, to soak up her wisdom and reap her decades of experience.
If Ingrid wanted, she could auction off something like that for tens of thousands at a Hollywood charity thing.
It’s the kind of graduation present she could see her Williams classmates’ parents buying for them just to get them situated in the industry.
Dr. Samuels walks over and sits on the edge of his desk, facing her.
“Now let’s talk about the risks. Because this is an experimental transfusion, we don’t know exactly how your body will react.
Blood transfusions as a whole are considered safe—we do them all the time in hospitals.
But they’re rarely done with the donor right there nor repeatedly with the same donor.
You need to be prepared for some elevated risks of donor DNA impacting your germ line. ”
“Like what?”
“Well, the biggest risk is it might affect your own aging process.”
Her heart falls into the pit of her stomach. Oh.
“I’m going to get older?” Maggie asks, putting a hand protectively to her face. So that’s the catch. Ingrid will get younger, but Maggie might age. She tries to wrap her head around this news. It makes her suddenly want to take her body off like a jacket and look at it.
“Yes,” Dr. Samuels says. “Again, there’s not a lot of data, but the theory is that Ingrid will age back ten years, and you might age forward by ten years.”
“Ten years?” Maggie repeats. All sorts of alarm bells are going off in her head—she’s not ready to be thirty-three. How’s her mother going to react? What if she has to go to her high school reunion? How’s she going to look?
Willa quickly offers, “Thirty-three’s nothing. You’ll still be young and hot! Only richer!”
“And you could still have children,” Dr. Samuels adds.
“Does it have to be ten years?” Maggie asks. “Can it be fewer, and Ingrid gets fewer years, too?”
“I’m afraid you would need to commit to ten transfusions. That actually counts as one cycle. Anything less than one cycle won’t make much of an impact. But this is still a very new, experimental procedure, and it’s entirely possible that on your body it won’t be ten years of aging.”
Willa nods encouragingly.
“Are you worried about the impact on fertility?” Dr. Samuels asks. “If you’re worried, you could get your eggs frozen—”
“No,” Maggie quickly says. The idea of her being responsible for kids makes her itch almost as bad as when she had the chicken pox. “I don’t want kids.”
Willa immediately adds, “Me, neither. Do you know how much they charge for daycare in this country? It’s obscene!”
Dr. Samuels’s face relaxes. “Good to know. But if you change your mind, we can explore oocyte cryopreservation at any time.”
“What about, like, menopause and stuff like that?” Maggie asks, trying to do the math in her head. If she’s thirty-three at twenty-three, she’d be fifty-three at forty-three.
“Yeah, that might happen earlier,” Dr. Samuels says. “Again, there’s just no real way to know since all the patients who have done this up until now have been men.”
Maggie mulls over this fact. There is something very exciting about being one of the first females to try it, she’ll admit.
But all these health changes make her wonder what she’s going to do when she starts getting older.
Will she have access to estrogen pills and shit? “Would you still be my doctor?”
“That’s…a very good question,” Dr. Samuels says, looking genuinely stumped. “I mean, I’d love that.”
“But I don’t think I can afford you…”
Willa clears her throat and adds, “Don’t you think that should be part of the deal? She should get to come here forever?”
To Maggie’s surprise, Dr. Samuels doesn’t balk or laugh. He just nods and writes it down. “Certainly seems reasonable to me. If you’re doing a highly experimental procedure, Ingrid should cover all your health care costs afterward.”
Willa nudges Maggie with her elbow, and Maggie almost pees herself. Free health care for life?
“Yeah, that’d be great!” Maggie says. “That would mean a lot to me.” She’s still not sure if it’s enough to age ten years, but it definitely cushions the blow. “And what does it feel like during the actual procedure?”
“You might feel a little lightheaded during the blood draw. I’d recommend hydrating and eating a hearty breakfast on the day. If you want, I can come up with a breakfast regimen.”
She smiles. A breakfast regimen! He’s adorable.
“And, of course, we’ll be keeping a close eye on your blood work and monitoring your cholesterol, glucose, vitamin deficiencies, blood pressure, all the good stuff,” Dr. Samuels says. “Do you have any questions?”
“Not right now,” Maggie says.
“And you still want to proceed?” Dr. Samuels asks.
Maggie takes her time responding, during which she carefully considers all her experiences in her short twenty-three years.
All the times she’s played it safe, not going for opportunities, thinking she was avoiding risk, only to still lose huge chunks of her heart.
At least this time, she knows exactly what she’s getting out of it.
“I do.”
“Great. I’ll send your blood work over to Dr. Hayes.” He smiles. “And, Maggie, if there’s anything at all you need from me, anything to make you more comfortable, please don’t hesitate. It’s what I’m here for.”
Maggie smiles and thanks Dr. Samuels. No medical professional has ever been so respectful to her—not at Williams, and not the person in urgent care last year when she had a burning UTI and could barely walk.
To know that this level of care and respect is possible and she can have it forever?
It almost makes her never want to go back to being a regular person.
—
Back at their apartment, Maggie and Willa dissect every minute of the visit, from the free juice bar to the comfortable chairs to the McDreamy doctor. They finally get to the topic of Maggie aging.
She and Willa both fall quiet.
“It’s only ten years,” Willa says.
Maggie nods.
“I’d kill to be in my thirties,” Willa adds. “You’ll be a rich bitch in beige!”
“Thirty-three,” Maggie repeats. She thinks of all her favorite Asian American movie stars and pulls out her phone to google their ages. She’s surprised to find out that Gemma Chan and Constance Wu are both in their forties. Neither looks a day over twenty-five.
“Besides, everyone knows Asians don’t raisin,” Willa adds.
Maggie turns her phone around to show Willa. She’s not wrong there.
Later that night, an email arrives from Ingrid, saying she’s happy to cover Maggie’s health insurance after the procedure.
There’s no deductible. No max limit in a year.
And she gets to keep seeing Dr. Samuels.
But it’s the words with dental that make her blood pound.
She feels like grabbing her phone and calling her mom.
Look! I did it! All on my own! Without a damn MBA!
But then a new worry lodges—what is she going to tell her parents when they see she’s aged ten years?
She texts Ingrid, can we talk?