Chapter 10 - The First Case
Daniel’s mother, Caroline Mercer, had been pregnant thirty-nine years earlier.
Not with Daniel.
With an earlier pregnancy.
Richard Mercer was young obstetric researcher then.
Caroline developed unusual fetal monitoring pattern.
Two rhythmic signals.
Doctors believed twins.
At delivery there was one infant.
A girl.
She lived eleven hours.
Confirmed death.
No secret surviving sister.
No switched baby.
But placenta examination showed rare vascular structure producing second pulsatile signal.
Richard became obsessed with understanding it.
Decades later Aster-9 grew partly from that case.
Caroline later had Daniel.
She died when Daniel was twelve from cancer.
Why hide first case?
Richard feared personal involvement compromised research.
Not sinister by itself.
Then archive revealed something else.
Case 1 infant death had been misdocumented initially as fetal death before delivery.
Same error pattern.
Caroline was told baby had died.
Then baby was born alive.
She had eleven hours with daughter.
History repeated with Emily.
And almost repeated with Claire if monitoring failed.
Richard built career trying to prevent same mistake that traumatized wife.
Yet his obsession created technology capable of repeating it.
Tragic irony.
But where was Emily?
Why was she hiding?
And why did she claim “they found pattern in someone else” two years ago if Claire only became Case 18 now?
Because there had already been another Case 18.
Claire’s number had been reassigned.
Original Case 18 record deleted.
Cybersecurity recovered fragments.
Patient:
M.D.
Pregnancy date:
two years ago, shortly after Emily.
Outcome:
RESTRICTED.
Daniel didn't recognize initials.
Vanessa did.
“Madeline Dawson.”
Emily and Vanessa’s cousin.
Madeline had supposedly miscarried at twenty weeks.
She lived in Arizona now.
Contacted by investigators, Madeline said:
“I never miscarried.”
Everyone went silent.
She had been told fetus died.
Transferred for specialized procedure.
Then woke after sedation and was told pregnancy had ended.
She never saw remains.
No pathology report ever reached her.
Daniel’s face hardened.
“Who treated you?”
Madeline answered:
“Not you.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Helen Shaw.”
Helen was nurse, not physician.
Madeline frowned.
“She introduced herself as doctor.”
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Now fraud became larger.
And someone had deliberately repeated same terrifying script.
