Chapter 15 - THE WOMAN IN THE EMBRYOLOGY LAB
Naomi Quinn returned to the state under immunity.
She carried a private notebook recording transfer dates, carrier numbers, and staff concerns.
Northbridge policy prohibited personal records.
She kept them because Dr. Holloway repeatedly changed official logs.
The notebook identified three earlier discrepancies.
In two cases, pregnancies had failed before genetic relationships could be tested.
In the third, a child had been born four years earlier.
The family had no idea.
Investigators sealed that information while a court determined how to approach them without causing unnecessary harm.
The clinic’s concealment had become a pattern.
Not every discrepancy meant a live embryo swap.
It meant Dr. Holloway chose reputation over disclosure whenever identification could not be guaranteed.
Naomi described the morning of our transfers.
She told Dr. Holloway the carriers might be reversed.
Dr. Holloway reviewed the patients’ ages, embryo grades, and medical histories.
Both embryos were healthy.
Both women were prepared.
Stopping the procedures would require admitting the chain of custody had failed.
“She told me the pregnancies would answer the question later,” Naomi said.
“What did that mean?”
“She believed if one failed, no one would ever need to know.”
Rebecca left the deposition room and vomited in the hallway.
I sat beside her while June and Ava remained with their nurses upstairs.
“She gambled on one of us losing a pregnancy,” Rebecca whispered.
“Yes.”
“And Luke knew.”
“Later.”
“He still knew.”
We returned together.
Naomi said Luke discovered the issue after my prenatal screening showed a hereditary marker absent from both Luke’s and my carrier panels.
He demanded Northbridge investigate privately.
Dr. Holloway gave him Rebecca’s donor and embryo records.
That disclosure alone violated Rebecca’s privacy.
Luke ordered a covert genetic comparison using stored samples.
The result showed the cross.
He proposed telling both women.
Dr. Holloway warned that Northbridge’s insurer might collapse, employees would lose jobs, and the pregnancies could become the subject of emergency litigation.
Luke changed course after two meetings.
“What changed?” the prosecutor asked.
Naomi looked toward the settlement documents.
“Money. And Mr. Mercer’s belief that genetic parenthood mattered more than pregnancy.”
Luke’s proffer added a darker detail.
He did not intend merely to switch the babies and leave.
He planned to have me sign routine discharge forms containing a release, then move our family to another state before Rebecca could obtain testing.
He had accepted a job with a Northbridge affiliate.
The moving company was booked.
Our house had been listed privately.
I knew none of it.
Eli found the listing online after the video became public.
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The bedroom photographs showed his belongings already packed into boxes while he slept elsewhere.
Luke had prepared to move every member of our family except the woman carrying the plan inside her body.
