Chapter 17 - THE FATHER WHO CHOSE BLOOD
The nurse admitted Northbridge’s insurer paid her to document attachment and custody risks.
She denied knowing the recorder remained active during mediation.
The court barred the company from providing any further services.
The recording was excluded.
Luke’s motion failed.
His evaluation report became public in part during the hearing.
He described Ava as the child “taken from us at conception.”
He described June as “the child Claire carried for Rebecca unknowingly.”
The language reduced pregnancy to transportation.
The evaluator asked whether he would have continued raising June if the genetic truth emerged years later.
Luke answered, “I don’t know.”
That uncertainty became central to his risk assessment.
Children needed adults whose attachment could survive facts.
Luke’s bond depended on a category he controlled.
I visited Ava twice a week under Rebecca’s supervision.
At first, every visit felt like trespassing.
I learned that she slept with one hand above her head. She hated cold wipes. She smiled earlier than June.
Rebecca visited June.
She sang a song her mother had sung to her. June quieted at the melody.
I felt jealousy so sharp that I almost ended the visit.
Instead I told the mediator.
“You are allowed to feel threatened,” she said. “You are not allowed to make the child responsible for soothing that threat.”
The rule applied to all of us.
Rebecca admitted she searched my face for signs that Ava preferred me.
“She doesn’t know me,” I said.
“She knew your heartbeat before she existed.”
“June knew mine for nine months.”
We stopped trying to win with biology.
Luke could not.
His proffer revealed he had chosen Ava’s name months before birth.
In private notes, he called her Elise.
He planned to persuade me that the hospital had recorded June’s sex incorrectly at first and that confusion explained differences in the band.
The story was absurd.
He believed exhaustion, medication, and authority would make it believable long enough.
He had also created a file documenting my postpartum anxiety before delivery.
Claire may resist corrected infant due hormonal attachment.
The words appeared in his handwriting.
He intended to pathologize my love for June.
Dr. Holloway’s notes went further.
Maternal resistance expected. Husband authorized to act for family unit.
Luke had appointed himself decision-maker over two mothers and two infants.
Then prosecutors recovered video from Northbridge’s conference room.
Luke sat across from Dr. Holloway after learning the embryo results.
She asked, “Which baby do you want?”
Luke answered without hesitation.
“The one that is ours.”
He did not ask what I wanted.
May you like
He did not ask what Rebecca wanted.
He did not ask what either child might need.
