In a conference room at University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, Virginia, the Hendersons’ children were present with some of their spouses. Rebekah Greenburg, with her husband Ron sat on the left side of the table with its screen sections in front of them showing the same, difficult to accept information, as it did to Joel and Shirley Henderson, and the youngest son Michael on the right side of the table. By default, the conference table’s giant embedded screen partitioned itself into discrete sections in front of each chair for document presentations. Included in this conference at the windowed end, and in left-to-right order was Dr. Saihah Mohammad, Director of Neurology wearing a traditional hijab of black with gold trim, along with an appropriately matching dress; Dr. Gregory Xu, Director of Legal Issues wearing a dark suit and burgundy tie with gold stripes; Dr. Leonetta Williamson, Bioregeneration Process Specialist wearing her lab coat over her business blouse and blue skirt combination; Bishop Lance Martin, of the Charlottesville First Ward, Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints, wearing a tan two-piece and a burgundy tie with silver paisleys; Dr. Suzanna Yuan, Director of Psychology in a frilled business shirt and blue slacks; and Mrs. Maribel McMillan, herself a regenerate of biological age 8, wearing her blue business skirt and blouse pair not too much different from that which was beneath Dr. Williamson’s white lab coat.
If it was a much less somber day, Maribel could have laughed to herself over the irony of the dress situation because she had spent up to an hour this morning with her mom trying to find something plain, simple, but unique for this event. During her whole life, both before and after her transformation, she had never liked wearing formal clothes because that was the only thing which she had ever stressed over like an obsessed, perfectionist teenager. Three people had needed to come to a consensus over whether or not to let their loved ones live and she had to be there with them.
In her mild Arab-speaking accent and her dry, matter-of-fact demeanor, Dr. Mohammad began, “Thank you all for coming today. First and foremost, Dr. Miguel Valdez, Director of Medicine sends his sincerest apologies, but he came down with the flu and unfortunately cannot appear today at this meeting. He has, however, invited each of Mr. and Mrs. Henderson’s children and their spouses to see him upon his return to full health, by appointment which he will endeavor to make his highest priority. He has requested that I proceed with the meeting in his absence. We want to present our findings on your parents’ conditions and explain why we came to the conclusion that we did before you can come to your decision. But first let us introduce each other.”
After the shaking of hands of each person around the table, Dr. Mohammad began referencing the documents displayed on each participant’s screen, and presented the doctors findings, using doctor’s jargon, and pausing every once in a while to explain what that means in non-medical jargon, to the children of both patients and to the other members of the meeting who were not medically trained.
“…Now you know why we came to the conclusion that both your mother and father are extremely unlikely to ever regain consciousness and their conditions will unfortunately continue to deteriorate slowly. It is feasible to assume that they will live another 6 months in the condition in which they are in, but not a significant amount of time afterwards. I’m really wish I had better news with respect to their conditions. If bioregeneration was not an option, I think we would probably be discussing the possibility of … terminating life support for both your parents right now, to be honest. However, because every one of you,” she addressed the children, specifically, “expressed interest in the bioregeneration option, I wanted to give you at least some good news: we have come to the consensus that we all believe both of your parents are excellent candidates for cloned infant bioregeneration, or CIB, and would approve usage of this procedure at your discretion. I would now like to introduce you to Dr. Susanna Yuan, who has reviewed all your statements on the personality characteristics of your mom and dad. Thank you Dr. Yuan, you may have the console,” She concluded.