Chương 6
“I understand.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
The woman inhaled.
“Ms. Bennett, I don’t want to give you information that is incomplete.”
Claire almost laughed.
Everyone suddenly cared about incomplete information.
“When did you discover the problem?”
“Initial discrepancies were identified in February.”
Claire looked at the calendar on Anna’s wall.
August.
“February.”
“Yes.”
“You knew in February.”
“The scope was not understood at that time.”
“When did you know my account was involved?”
“I would need to verify the exact date.”
“Do that.”
“Yes.”
“And why wasn’t I told?”
“I can’t answer that responsibly without reviewing the file.”
“Then review it.”
Claire ended the call.
Anna opened one eye.
“Who was that?”
“The clinic.”
“Bad?”
“Yes.”
“How bad?”
“I don’t know.”
Anna sat up.
Her hair was flattened on one side.
“That might be the worst kind.”
Claire nodded.
At nine thirty, Evan arrived.
Anna refused to let him inside.
Claire listened from the kitchen while they argued quietly in the hallway.
“I need to see her.”
“No.”
“Anna.”
“She said no.”
“I live with her.”
“Not here.”
“She’s carrying my child.”
There was a silence.
Then Anna said, “Maybe don’t lead with that today.”
Claire closed her eyes.
A minute later, the door shut.
Anna returned carrying a paper bag.
“He brought your clothes.”
Claire stared at it.
“And your toothbrush.”
“That’s optimistic.”
“He also brought the ridiculous pregnancy pillow.”
Claire looked toward the hallway.
“How?”
“I made him leave it outside.”
The pillow was enormous and shaped like a pale gray horseshoe.
Claire had complained about it every night for three months.
She hugged it when Anna brought it in.
By noon, Richard had texted once.
I am sorry. No excuse. I have sent you the attorney’s contact information and instructed him to provide everything he can directly to you. I will not contact you again unless you ask.
Claire read it three times.
Then she called the attorney.
Martin Hale turned out to be less dramatic than his name suggested.
He sounded tired.
He also sounded angry.
Not at Claire.
At Richard.
“Mr. Bennett should have told you immediately.”
“Yes.”
“I told him that.”
“When?”
“Four months ago.”
Claire sat at Anna’s kitchen table.
“Did he tell you why he didn’t?”
“He said he wanted more information.”
“That seems to be contagious.”
Martin was silent.
“What do you actually know?”
He explained carefully.
Three former patients had retained a separate law firm after receiving inconsistent embryo-storage records. Martin had spoken with that firm.
The clinic had begun an internal audit.
State regulators had been notified of a documentation issue, though Martin would not characterize its scope without records.
No confirmed embryo transfer error had been established in the material he had seen.
“Could my embryo have been transferred to someone else?”
“It is possible.”
“Could someone else’s have been transferred to me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could I have had a transfer without knowing?”
Martin paused.
“Not realistically.”
Claire appreciated the answer.
The billing code could be wrong.
The storage record could be wrong.
The former employee could be wrong.
The pregnancy could still have happened exactly as Claire and Evan believed.
Or something else had happened to their embryo.
Those were separate questions.
Margaret had fused them into one accusation because accusation was easier to hold than uncertainty.
Claire asked Martin to send everything.
Then she called her obstetrician.
Dr. Patel fit her in that afternoon.
The baby’s heartbeat was normal.
Claire lay on the examination table staring at the ceiling while the Doppler produced the fast, familiar rhythm.
For the first time since the restaurant, she breathed normally.
Dr. Patel set the device aside.
“Baby seems completely unimpressed by family drama.”
Claire laughed.
“Can I borrow that attitude?”
“Not billable, unfortunately.”
Then Dr. Patel became serious.
Claire explained the clinic problem.
She expected surprise.
She did not expect Dr. Patel to solve it, and Dr. Patel did not.
“Genetic parentage testing is possible,” she said, “but we should talk carefully about what information you actually need and when you need it.”
“Now.”
“I understand why.”
“No. I mean I need it now.”
Dr. Patel nodded.
“Then we’ll discuss safe options and what each can and cannot tell you.”
Claire looked down at her belly.
“What if she isn’t ours?”
Dr. Patel pulled her stool closer.
“She is the baby you’re carrying.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
“I know.”
Claire turned her face away.
The examination room had a poster about breastfeeding and a plastic model of a pelvis on the counter.
Everything looked offensively normal.
“What happens?”
“That depends on what the facts are.”
“Everyone keeps saying that.”
“Because right now you have several frightening possibilities and very few verified facts.”
Claire looked at her.
“Can I tell you something annoying?”
“Please.”
“That’s the first useful thing anyone has said to me.”
Dr. Patel smiled slightly.
“Then here’s another. You don’t have to make every decision today.”
Claire went back to Anna’s apartment.
She did not go home.
For three days, she did almost nothing except read records, attend one prenatal appointment, eat cereal, and ignore Evan.
The clinic sent 438 pages.
Most were boring.
Claire loved the boring pages.
Medication logs. Consent forms. Temperature records. Appointment summaries. Laboratory notes written in abbreviations she had to look up.
Boring meant something had existed before the crisis.
A life.
A process.
On the fourth day, she found the first contradiction.
Their storage inventory listed four embryos after the final canceled cycle.
A later report listed three.
Then four again.
One embryo identifier had been manually corrected.
Claire stared at the screen.
The corrected identifier ended in 17B.
She searched the document.
Seventeen matches.
Most were ordinary.
Then she found a thaw record.
17B.
Status: thaw initiated.
The date was the same date as the erroneous transfer charge.
Claire stopped breathing.
She called Martin.
He asked her not to draw conclusions.
She nearly hung up.
May you like
Then he explained why.
A thaw record could have been initiated and canceled.
