Chapter 5: The Clinic’s Locked Drawer
The next morning, Phoebe sat beside me in a Boston fertility clinic with both hands clasped over her coat.
She kept her purse on her lap. The gold-and-pearl pin wasn’t on her collar anymore. I tried not to look for it.
Nora sat on my other side, a folder balanced on one knee. None of us had slept much. Charles’s accusation had traveled through his family faster than the truth ever could. My phone had been buzzing since dawn. I’d stopped reading the messages.
Across the waiting room, a child in a red sweater pressed his palm to the aquarium glass. A fish darted away. His mother laughed softly and drew him back.
Phoebe watched them, her mouth tightening.
“Do you want to go?” I asked.
“No.” She took a breath that seemed to stop halfway. “I want to know what happened.”
A door opened. Dr. Lena Ortiz stepped into the waiting room, her expression composed, her eyes tired.
“Ms. Bennett? Ms. Stanhope? We can speak in my office.”
Phoebe stood. I followed her down the hall, aware of every camera in the ceiling and every locked door we passed.
Dr. Ortiz’s office smelled faintly of coffee and antiseptic. She closed the door but didn’t sit right away.
“I want to be clear about what I can discuss,” she said. “This clinic protects each patient’s privacy. Phoebe has signed a release allowing us to discuss her pregnancy and the transfer records relating to it. Hannah, I also need your authorization to review your treatment file in this conversation.”
“I’ll sign whatever release you need.”
Nora slid a form across the desk. Dr. Ortiz checked it, then gave me another. I read it before signing. Not because I thought every paper hid a trap, but because I had finally learned what it cost to let someone else decide what my name meant.
When the doctor sat, Phoebe leaned forward.
“Are the girls from Hannah’s embryos?”
Dr. Ortiz looked at her carefully. “The records connect the transfer to the embryo identifiers listed in Hannah’s treatment file. Those embryos were created using Hannah’s eggs and Charles’s sperm.”
Phoebe’s fingers curled around the strap of her purse.
“So they are—”
“I can confirm what the records show,” Dr. Ortiz said gently. “I can’t tell you what your relationship with the girls should be. That’s not something a file can decide.”
Phoebe looked down at her hands. The answer had given her a fact, not a way to live with it.
I placed my old treatment summaries on the desk. The paper edges had softened from years in a box. I had kept them through every move, though I’d once thought I would never want to see them again.
“These are my copies,” I said. “I’m not asking you to accuse anyone. I want the original consent reviewed against these.”
Dr. Ortiz looked through the pages without rushing. Her gaze paused at a line of handwritten initials, then moved to the next sheet.
“I can’t authenticate a signature from these copies,” she said. “And I won’t make a conclusion based on visual comparison in this room.”
Nora nodded once. “We’re asking for the original records to be preserved and reviewed properly.”
“That’s appropriate.” Dr. Ortiz folded her hands. “I’ve already ordered the relevant records secured while our internal review begins. No one should alter or discard anything.”
The words settled over the desk. Secured. Reviewed. They sounded solid, but they didn’t tell me who had touched the file or what they’d done.
“What did the original consent packet contain?” I asked.
Dr. Ortiz’s expression changed—barely, but enough.
“It’s incomplete.”
Phoebe lifted her head. “Incomplete how?”
“One page is missing from the archived packet.”
The aquarium’s blue light seemed to follow us into the room. I thought of my signature on the divorce agreement, each careful mark made after my attorney had reviewed the terms. A name on a page could look like certainty from across a room. Up close, it could be a door somebody else had opened.
“Do you know when it went missing?” Nora asked.
“Not yet. We’re checking the archive history and access records.”
“Can you tell us what the page said?” Phoebe asked.
“I can’t tell you what isn’t there.” Dr. Ortiz’s voice softened. “I know that’s not enough.”
No, I thought. It wasn’t.
But it was more than Charles had given us: dates he wouldn’t explain, papers he wouldn’t show, an answer that changed shape every time Phoebe asked a new question.
Dr. Ortiz turned a monitor toward herself and reviewed the released records. She read out the transfer date, then compared it with the embryo identifiers listed on my treatment summaries. The date matched the transfer record. So did the identifiers.
My throat tightened. The embryos I had once pictured as a possibility—small, frozen chances at a life I’d wanted—had not simply disappeared into the past. They had been transferred into Phoebe.
“Is there anything else you can confirm?” I asked.
“Not today.” Dr. Ortiz met my eyes. “The records need a full review. I don’t want to promise you a result before we have one.”
I respected her for that. I hated how little comfort it gave me.
Phoebe was staring at the date on the screen.
“Charles knew they were there,” she said.
It wasn’t a question.
No one answered for a moment.
Dr. Ortiz turned off the monitor. “I can’t speak to what he knew. I can tell you the clinic is treating the missing page and the transfer documentation as serious.”
When we stepped into the hall, Phoebe stopped beside a window overlooking the street. People hurried past below, collars raised against the cold.
“They’re real,” she whispered. “The girls.”
“Yes.”
“And this doesn’t tell me what I’m supposed to call myself.”
“No,” I said. “It doesn’t.”
Her eyes flicked to mine, searching for an answer I couldn’t give without turning her into another person’s property.
“You don’t have to decide everything today,” I said.
“I know.” She pressed her lips together. “But Charles will want me to.”
Nora’s phone rang. She glanced at the screen and stepped away to answer it.
Phoebe’s phone vibrated in her hand.
She looked down.
The color drained from her face.
“What is it?” I asked.
For a moment she didn’t speak. Then she held the screen out to me.
The message was from Charles.
If you keep meeting with Hannah, I’ll make sure you leave with nothing.
Phoebe’s thumb hovered over the screen. Her hands were shaking now, though she tried to hide it by closing them around her phone.
May you like
I didn’t tell her it would be all right. I didn’t know that.
I only stayed beside her while she read the threat again, and watched fear become a choice she hadn’t yet made.
