Chapter 10 - The Pregnancy Eleanor Never Questioned
Eleanor’s medical records showed an intrauterine insemination procedure.
She stared at the page as though it belonged to another woman.
“I never had this.”
The date was nine months before Sophie’s birth.
Ethan remembered it differently.
Eleanor underwent what they were told was a diagnostic fertility procedure.
Sedation.
Routine.
Richard recommended the clinic.
His clinic.
Eleanor began shaking.
“They inseminated me without telling me?”
No one wanted to answer before evidence.
The procedure coding could have been fraudulent billing.
Records could be wrong.
But Sophie’s genetics proved Eleanor had conceived with someone other than Ethan.
She denied sexual contact with anyone else.
The likely explanation became horrifying.
Someone at Richard’s clinic had used the wrong reproductive sample in Eleanor’s treatment too.
Two women.
Two sample errors.
Claire received Ethan’s sample.
Eleanor received someone else’s.
Then both gave birth on the same night.
This was no longer coincidence.
Police audited the clinic’s old cryogenic records.
One sample container assigned to Ethan had been removed.
Another assigned to donor code D-144 was removed the same day.
Records later altered.
D-144’s identity was sealed.
Richard had access.
So did the clinic director.
Dr. Martin Hale.
Alive.
Seventy-one.
When questioned, Hale initially blamed Richard.
Then investigators showed him the audit trail.
Hale began sweating.
“You need to understand what Richard was trying to prevent.”
“What?”
“A lawsuit.”
“Whose?”
“Eleanor’s.”
Hale admitted a laboratory technician accidentally transposed two sample labels.
Ethan’s material was assigned to Claire’s donor procedure.
D-144 was assigned to Eleanor’s.
The error was discovered forty-eight hours later.
By then both procedures had occurred.
Richard was informed.
“What did he do?”
“He said we wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“To see whether either woman became pregnant.”
Both did.
Richard panicked.
He feared two families destroyed, the clinic closed and criminal investigations.
He proposed telling everyone privately.
Hale resisted.
Then Richard changed course.
“He said he would handle it.”
“Did he order the babies switched?”
Hale looked horrified.
“No.”
“Did he cause the blackout?”
“No.”
“Then who knew?”
Hale listed five people.
Richard.
Hale.
A lab technician.
Catherine.
And one attorney representing the clinic.
Margaret Sloan.
Police searched Margaret.
Dead eight months.
But her files survived.
Inside was a memo written before the births:
R.P. rejects any alteration of newborn identity. States children must remain with gestational mothers regardless of genetic error. Disclosure after delivery.
Ethan read it twice.
Richard had explicitly rejected switching the babies.
That did not make him innocent.
He later buried the truth.
But it meant the central crime may not have been his plan.
Then another memo:
M.S. concerned E.V. will reject child if donor identity becomes known.
Eleanor frowned.
“Why?”
The donor identity had been sealed even from Richard initially.
Police obtained a court order.
D-144:
DANIEL VOSS.
Eleanor stopped breathing.
Noah whispered:
“Who is Daniel Voss?”
Ethan looked at his wife.
She knew.
Eleanor’s eyes filled with something older than fear.
“He was my fiancé.”
Before Ethan.
Before the marriage.
Before Noah.
May you like
Daniel Voss had died eleven years ago.
And Eleanor had once told Richard she never wanted to hear his name again.
