How It All Goes Down
Four
- Wednesday, July 21, 1999/September 8, 1998 (Henry is 36, Clare is 28)
- Daily discussions about their miscarriages put a strain on Henry and Clare's marriage. Henry suggests they adopt, but Clare responds: "But that would be fake. It would be pretending" (2.8.5). She wants something real in their lives. She's sick of acting like they're normal people, leading a normal life. Henry is sick of seeing Clare's anguish and sick of sex as a means to an end.
- Henry leaves the house and decides to go for a drive in the car. He parks near Lake Michigan and walks out to the edge of the pier. He concludes that the reason they can't have a baby is because nature deemed him a faulty organism that shouldn't procreate. He also realizes that he's never seen himself with a baby in the future.
- Pop! Henry suddenly finds himself in Mrs. Kim's kitchen. When Mrs. Kim asks him if they already have a baby in his present, he tells her about their troubles and asks why she never had children. She reveals to him that she did have a girl who died at the age of seven. Henry now vaguely remembers her.
- Clare stands at Lake Michigan, surrounded by police, reporters, and TV cameras. She's very worried because a policeman saw Henry jump off the pier. When Henry climbs back up out of the water, he tells the crowd he just went for a swim. Clare and Henry apologize to each other for arguing earlier.
- Friday, January 14, 2000 (Clare is 28, Henry is 36): At his lab, Dr. Kendrick introduces Henry and Clare to the time-traveling mice he created by cloning the damaged portion of Henry's DNA that he identified as responsible for Henry's condition. He mentions that the hard part of creating time-traveling mice was that their mothers kept dying when carrying the altered mice to term. So did the babies. Kendrick concluded that the mothers' immune system was rejecting the altered babies, so he gave them drugs to inhibit that reaction.
- At home, Clare excitedly calls her doctor to ask about drugs to inhibit her immune system. Henry acts hesitant, reminding her that until Kendrick figured out the right drugs, the mothers kept dying.