Chương 6
“That easy?”
Ortiz shook her head.
“No. Not easy. Opportunistic.”
“What happened to him?”
“He exited through a service stairwell to the parking structure.”
“You lost him.”
“We don’t have him.”
Emily hated the careful precision.
“Did Margaret come with him?”
“Different arrival times.”
“She knew him.”
“We believe so.”
“You believe.”
Ortiz looked at Emily.
“Ms. Hale said he was a consultant.”
“For what?”
“She stopped talking after asking for an attorney.”
Emily leaned back.
Her body felt heavy.
“Of course.”
Victor’s phone buzzed.
He read the screen.
“What?”
He looked at the privacy officer through the door window, then back at Emily.
“The release page was printed at 3:19 a.m.”
“By Janet?”
“No.”
Rachel straightened.
“Who?”
Victor's face tightened.
“It was printed from a workstation in the family consultation room.”
Rachel shook her head.
“That room is locked overnight.”
“Apparently it was opened.”
“By who?”
“We don’t know.”
Emily looked at the paper again.
“Where is that room?”
“Down the hall.”
“How far?”
“About forty yards.”
“The man wasn’t here at three nineteen.”
“Not according to the cameras we’ve checked.”
“So someone else signed it.”
Victor said nothing.
Emily understood.
There was not one breach.
There were at least two.
Maybe more.
Janet Vale had altered the record.
Someone had printed a release form in a locked room.
Someone had signed it.
Margaret Hale had arrived knowing the time.
A dark-suited man had appeared later expecting access.
Emily looked at the baby.
For the first time since the door slammed, fear became something else.
Not panic.
Suspicion.
“Someone inside this hospital was preparing to hand him over.”
No one contradicted her.
By noon, North Lake Reproductive Medicine had called twice.
Emily did not answer.
The first voicemail came from a nurse coordinator she barely remembered.
The second came from the clinic’s medical director.
He asked her to call urgently regarding “a confidential matter associated with her treatment record.”
Emily played the message three times.
Rachel stood near the window.
Officer Ortiz had gone to speak with detectives.
The baby slept in the bassinet because Emily’s arms had finally begun to cramp.
“Did the hospital call them?” Emily asked.
Rachel said, “I don’t know.”
Emily looked at the phone.
“Then how do they know?”
Rachel did not answer.
Emily called the number back.
The medical director answered himself.
“Ms. Carter?”
“Yes.”
“This is Dr. Harlan Beck. First, I want to say—”
“Do not start with an apology.”
There was a pause.
“All right.”
“Do you know Margaret Hale?”
A longer pause.
Emily closed her eyes.
“Answer.”
“Yes.”
Something inside her dropped.
Rachel moved closer to the bed but stopped before reaching it.
Emily gripped the phone.
“How?”
“Ms. Carter, this conversation involves sensitive information, and I think we should—”
“Do you know why she tried to get into my hospital room this morning?”
“I heard there was an incident.”
“Who told you?”
“Our attorney received a call from the hospital.”
“What does Margaret Hale have to do with my baby?”
Silence.
Emily heard someone breathing at the other end.
“Dr. Beck.”
“There was an internal review at North Lake last month.”
The room seemed to narrow.
“What review?”
“An inventory reconciliation involving archived cryogenic records.”
Emily did not understand at first.
Then she did.
Her hand went to the baby’s bassinet.
“No.”
“Ms. Carter—”
“No.”
“We do not yet have a confirmed conclusion.”
“You called me after a woman tried to take my son.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don't.”
“You’re right.”
That answer made her angrier.
“What did you find?”
“A discrepancy in historical labeling.”
Emily stared at the wall.
Rachel's face had gone pale above her mask.
“What discrepancy?”
“Your embryo transfer record and a stored embryo inventory record share a conflicting identifier.”
“English.”
“An embryo assigned to another patient family may have been associated with your transfer.”
Emily’s mouth opened.
No sound came.
The baby moved in his sleep.
The monitor beeped.
Somebody in the hallway laughed at something entirely unrelated to Emily’s life.
She stared at the bassinet.
“No.”
“We have not completed confirmatory testing.”
“You said my embryo was tested.”
“The embryo transferred was tested.”
“My embryo.”
“The embryo documented under your case.”
“That is my embryo.”
“We believed it was.”
Emily stood.
Pain bent her immediately.
Rachel reached for her.
Emily slapped the nurse’s hand away.
“Don’t.”
Rachel backed off.
Emily steadied herself against the bed rail and walked the two steps to the bassinet.
Her son slept with one fist beside his face.
“Whose embryo?” Emily whispered.
Dr. Beck did not answer.
“Whose?”
“A patient named Laura Hale and her husband had embryos stored at North Lake.”
Emily’s knees weakened.
Rachel pulled a chair behind her without touching her.
Emily sat.
“Hale.”
“Yes.”
“Margaret?”
“Laura Hale was her daughter.”
Was.
Emily caught the word.
“Was?”
“Laura and her husband died three years ago.”
Emily pressed a hand over her mouth.
The clinic director kept talking, but the words blurred.
Estate instructions.
Storage directives.
Records migration.
Archived samples.
Barcode reconciliation.
Emily heard fragments and understood none of them until he said her husband’s name.
“Aaron Carter’s sample records are not missing.”
Emily straightened.
“What?”
“Your remaining embryo inventory is being secured.”
“Remaining?”
“There is one embryo associated with your case still in storage.”
Emily stared ahead.
She and Aaron had created two viable embryos.
One had been transferred.
One frozen.
At least, that was what they had been told.
“If you transferred hers,” Emily said slowly, “what happened to mine?”
“We don’t know yet.”
The sentence gutted her.
Rachel sat on the edge of the visitor chair across the room.
Emily looked at the sleeping newborn.
Yesterday, she would have sworn she could see Aaron in him.
The slope of the forehead.
The shape of the upper lip.
The little crease near his left ear.
Now every resemblance felt like evidence she had manufactured because she needed it.
She put her fingers around the bassinet rail.
May you like
“Why wasn’t I told?”
“We did not have confirmation.”
