The male doctor bustled from surgery, peeling off bloody gloves. “She’ll be fine. Thanks for your help.” He came over and examined the baby. “The mother doesn’t want to see her.” He took a small bottle from his breast pocket. Unscrewing the strange rubber-topped lid, he withdrew a thin glass tube. “Hold her still,” he instructed as he opened one of the baby’s blue eyes. He squeezed the rubber and a drop of liquid splashed into her eye.

She startled and blinked. The doctor quickly doused her other eye, and retuned the bottle to his pocket. He held out his hands. “I’ll take her now.”

As he settled her in the crook of his arm, she opened both eyes wide and gazed at me with brown eyes. I almost stumbled. He had changed her eye color! Is that what Domotor meant when he had said I had been born with my father’s blue eyes?

Doctor Lamont wheeled the woman from surgery, and I helped transfer the patient from the table to a bed. The woman cried in silence. Tears flowed down her temples and her mouth gathered into a tight grimace.

Lamont stroked the woman’s head and squeezed her hand. “It’ll be all right. The baby’s healthy. She’ll do fine.”

Nothing the doctor said eased the woman’s misery. When we returned to Lamont’s office, she collapsed in a chair behind her desk and opened a drawer. Taking out a small glass and a bottle filled with an amber-colored liquid, she poured herself a drink. She considered, then reached for another glass and poured another albeit smaller portion.

“Sit down, Ella. Your performance in surgery was exemplary.” She pushed the second glass toward me as I settled in the opposite chair. “Most people would faint on seeing so much blood, and to see the inside of a person’s body.”

I sniffed the contents of the glass. The fumes stung my eyes. “I tried not to think about what it meant. Just followed orders.”

The doctor sipped her drink. I copied her, and almost spat the burning liquid out. She chuckled. “Haven’t had spirits before?”

“No. My friend did once, but he wouldn’t let me try it.” Good thing, too, or I would have yelled and brought unwelcome attention.

“It’s an acquired taste. The burn down your throat and the numbing warmth in your stomach become a pleasant experience.”

Knowing what to expect, I swallowed the second sip without choking. The doctor rested her head on the back of the chair, closing her eyes.

“I do have a question,” I ventured.

Without opening her eyes, she raised her glass in a swirl. “Go ahead.”

“Why is the woman so upset?”

Her eyes snapped open and she fixed me with an incredulous expression. “You don’t know?” Seeing my evident confusion, she straightened. “Aren’t the women in the lower levels upset when they give their babies away?”

“Some are, I guess. But this is the upper level. You have families.”

Understanding smoothed her sharp features before lines of grief deepened. “Yes, we have families, but, up here the rule is one couple, one child. We don’t have enough room for more people, so if a couple has an accident and conceives another child, the child is sent to the lower levels.”