Chapter 4 - The Embryologist Who Disappeared
Harper's warning changed everything.
For nearly two years, I'd carried the grief of my failed retrieval like a private funeral.
Dr. Venn had told me twelve eggs were collected, seven fertilized poorly, and none developed into embryos healthy enough to freeze.
I remembered sitting in the clinic parking lot afterward while Harrison held me against his chest.
"I'm sorry," he'd whispered into my hair. "Maybe this is the universe telling us to stop hurting ourselves."
I had blamed my body.
I had apologized to him.
That memory became unbearable now.
Naomi requested the complete embryology lab file that same day.
The clinic's lawyer responded within an hour.
Records are being assembled.
Naomi read the sentence aloud and snorted.
"Translated: people are panicking."
"Can they hide the embryos?"
"They can try to hide records. Physical material is harder, especially now that they know counsel is involved."
Nora paced beside the fireplace.
"What if they're stored somewhere else?"
"Then we follow the chain."
I looked at my phone.
"Harper knows."
"Maybe," Naomi said. "Or Harrison told her just enough to frighten you."
"Why would she frighten me if she wants me compliant?"
Naomi's mouth tightened.
"Because Harper may not be as aligned with Harrison as she wants you to think."
That turned out to be true much sooner than we expected.
At 6:12 p.m., I received an email from an address I didn't recognize.
Subject: YOUR RETRIEVAL.
The message contained one sentence.
If you want the truth about March 8, come to St. Luke's Episcopal Church parking lot tomorrow at 10 a.m. Bring your lawyer. Do not bring Harrison Mercer.
Attached was a photograph.
A laboratory screen.
At the top was my patient ID.
Below it were six embryo images labeled C. MERCER.
Six.
Not zero.
I stared at the screen until the numbers blurred.
"Naomi."
She came beside me.
One look and her face changed.
"Forward it to me. Don't respond yet."
The next morning, Naomi hired a private security consultant to watch from a distance while she and I went to the church.
Nora wanted to come.
Naomi refused.
"Too many recognizable Mercers."
At 9:58, a battered blue Subaru pulled into the far corner of the lot.
A man in his thirties got out.
Thin. Glasses. Dark beard. Nervous enough to look over both shoulders before taking three steps.
He approached my window but didn't come too close.
"Mrs. Mercer?"
"Yes."
"I'm Ethan Brooks. I worked in Dr. Venn's embryology lab."
Worked.
Past tense.
Naomi stepped out first.
"I'm Naomi Carter, counsel for Mrs. Mercer. Before you say anything substantive, I want you to understand I do not represent you."
"I know."
"Do you have your own attorney?"
"Not yet."
"You should."
He gave a humorless laugh.
"I should have had one six months ago."
We sat in Naomi's SUV because I couldn't stand for long.
Ethan kept his backpack on his lap.
"I need you to know something first," he said to me. "I was in the lab when your embryos were created. I did not know what Dr. Venn planned to do later. But I should have questioned things sooner."
"Start at the beginning."
He nodded.
"Your retrieval produced twelve mature oocytes. Nine fertilized normally. Six reached blastocyst stage. Four were graded highly enough that I expected them to be cryopreserved for your future use."
My chest hurt.
Six.
Four good enough to freeze.
Years of believing my body had failed.
All of it a lie.
"What happened?"
"Dr. Venn instructed me to cryopreserve all six under a secondary storage code. He said there was a legal privacy issue involving the Mercers. That isn't common, but clinics sometimes use coded storage in high-profile cases. I followed the instruction."
Naomi took notes.
"Were the embryos genetically Chloe's and Harrison's?"
"According to the gamete records, yes."
I pressed my fingers against my lips.
My babies.
Maybe not children yet, maybe possibilities, maybe cells that might never become anything more.
But ours.
And Harrison had let me mourn them as dead.
"Where are they?"
Ethan looked at Naomi.
"Four are still in storage. Two were removed."
Every hair on my arms lifted.
"Removed where?"
"That's part of why I'm here."
He opened his backpack and took out a thick envelope.
"Six months ago, Dr. Venn scheduled your transfer. The official chart showed three embryos assigned to you. But the lab manifest showed those embryos coming from three separate source records: Harper Sloan, Madison Keene, and Audrey Callahan."
My hands went cold.
"You knew?"
"I knew the embryos were genetically unrelated to you. I assumed you were acting as a gestational carrier."
"Did you meet me?"
"No. Embryologists usually aren't in the patient room for transfer preparation."
"When did you realize I didn't know?"
Ethan swallowed.
"Two days later."
He slid a printed email across the console.
It was from Dr. Venn to Harrison.
Subject: C adjustment.
We need to control her follow-up questions. She asked why no PGT summary was included in the portal. Please reinforce that the embryos were untested because of development timing. Do not discuss donor origins.
I read the final sentence twice.
Do not discuss donor origins.
"You saw this?"
"Dr. Venn accidentally copied the lab administrative group. He recalled the email, but not before I read it."
"What did you do?"
"I asked him if you knew you were carrying donor embryos. He told me to mind my department."
"And then?"
"I pulled your electronic consent."
Naomi leaned closer.
"The one timestamped during sedation?"
Ethan nodded.
"It wasn't there when the transfer happened."
The air in the SUV changed.
"What do you mean?"
"The donor-embryo consent was added afterward."
Naomi stopped writing.
"Can you prove that?"
"I copied the audit log before they terminated me."
He handed her a flash drive.
"The file was created three days after transfer, backdated in the visible interface, then linked to an electronic signature token from a different consent you had signed during treatment."
I stared at him.
"They copied my signature?"
"Yes."
There it was.
Not carelessness.
Not buried fine print.
Not a misunderstanding.
Fabrication.
Naomi's voice became very quiet.
"Why were you fired?"
"Because I told Dr. Venn I was going to report him."
"Did you?"
Ethan looked ashamed.
"I started to. Then his lawyer sent me a letter accusing me of stealing proprietary patient data and threatening criminal action. My wife was eight months pregnant. I got scared."
"So you disappeared."
"I moved to New Jersey and took a job at a research lab."
He looked at me.
"Then I saw a charity post Harrison made last week about his wife carrying miracle triplets after infertility. Your face was in the picture. I realized you still didn't know."
My skin prickled.
"What about the two embryos removed from my storage?"
Ethan looked down at his hands.
"I don't know exactly where they went."
"But you know something."
"There was a transfer authorization."
He pulled out another page.
The recipient field was coded.
No name.
Only a number.
GC-1187.
Gestational carrier.
I stared at the code.
"Someone else is carrying my embryos?"
"Possibly one or both," Ethan said. "The authorization removed two straws from storage. I don't know whether they were transferred, discarded, moved, or re-labeled."
I couldn't speak.
Harrison had put three other women's embryos inside me.
And he may have put mine inside someone else.
It was so grotesquely symmetrical that for a moment it didn't feel real.
Naomi's pen was motionless.
"Who authorized removal?"
Ethan looked at me.
"Harrison Mercer and Dr. Venn."
"Not Chloe?"
"No."
I turned toward the window.
Across the parking lot, sunlight hit the church steeple.
A woman pushed a stroller along the sidewalk.
Somewhere, there might be a pregnant stranger carrying embryos created from my eggs without my knowledge.
I imagined another woman being lied to the way I had been.
I imagined a child already born.
I couldn't tell which possibility frightened me more.
"We need the identity behind GC-1187," Naomi said.
Ethan nodded.
"There's more."
I looked back.
He reached into his backpack again and took out a small external drive.
"The clinic records procedure rooms for training and quality review. Most video is automatically deleted after thirty days unless flagged. Your transfer video was flagged by Dr. Venn. I copied it before I left."
My heartbeat thudded in my ears.
"Why was it flagged?"
"Because something happened during the procedure."
Naomi didn't touch the drive.
"What?"
Ethan's face had gone pale.
"You woke up."
I frowned.
"I don't remember waking up."
"You weren't supposed to be deeply sedated for a standard embryo transfer. But Dr. Venn had combined it with another procedure. He gave you medication before the transfer. In the video, you became partially alert while he was preparing the catheter."
I could hear my own breathing.
"What did I say?"
Ethan looked at me with something close to grief.
"You asked why there were three embryos on the screen when Harrison had told you they were transferring two of yours."
My throat closed.
"And what did Dr. Venn say?"
"He told you the third image was a duplicate display."
I shut my eyes.
A fragment of memory surfaced.
Bright light.
A monitor.
Harrison's hand holding mine.
A voice saying, It's okay, sweetheart. Go back to sleep.
I'd thought it was a dream.
Ethan continued.
"Then you said, 'Those aren't my names.'"
My eyes flew open.
"Names?"
"The embryo labels appeared on a side monitor for several seconds. H. Sloan. M. Keene. A. Callahan."
Naomi finally took the drive.
"And then?"
Ethan's jaw tightened.
"Harrison leaned over you and said, 'Chloe, stop fighting the medication.'"
My entire body went cold.
"I fought?"
"You tried to sit up. Dr. Venn increased the sedative."
I stopped breathing.
Naomi's eyes hardened.
"Without stopping the procedure?"
"Without stopping."
For a long moment, no one spoke.
Then my phone rang.
Harrison.
I stared at his name.
Ethan looked terrified.
Naomi gestured for me not to answer.
I didn't.
A text arrived immediately.
Where are you?
Then another.
I called the house. Elena said you left with Naomi.
And another.
Come home now.
I looked at Naomi.
"He knows."
Her phone rang next.
Nora.
Naomi answered on speaker.
"What's wrong?"
Nora's voice came fast.
"Harrison came home. He's tearing through Chloe's office. He knows someone accessed the Trinity folder."
My stomach tightened.
"How?"
"I don't know. But he just called Dr. Venn and said, 'Move the remaining Mercer embryos today.'"
I grabbed the dashboard.
"No."
Nora whispered, "Chloe, there's something else."
"What?"
"He said, 'And find out where GC-1187 is before my wife does.'"
The parking lot seemed to fall away beneath me.
The code wasn't an old forgotten record.
Harrison was still tracking it.
May you like
Which meant whoever carried my missing embryos might still be out there.
And Harrison was suddenly desperate to reach her first.
