Chapter 4 - Margaret Kept The Embryo Ledger
Hospital administrators arrived.
So did police.
What began as an attempted infant removal became something much larger.
Emily refused to let Richard, Margaret, or Tyler near her son.
A nurse moved them to a secure maternity room under an alias.
Emily called her best friend, Claire, who arrived within an hour.
Claire took one look at Emily’s bruised cheek and started crying.
“What happened?”
Emily told her.
Not gracefully.
Not in order.
By the end, Claire sat speechless.
“So Noah was biologically yours?”
“Yes.”
“And this baby came from an embryo created eleven years ago?”
“Apparently.”
“And there may be more?”
Emily looked at the sleeping newborn.
“Yes.”
Claire reached for her hand.
“What do you need?”
The question almost destroyed her.
Everyone else had spent hours telling Emily what she should do.
Stay in bed.
Calm down.
Don’t listen.
Don’t ask.
Claire asked what she needed.
“A lawyer.”
“Done.”
“And I need to know whether my baby is safe.”
“We’ll find out.”
“And I need Richard away from me.”
Claire nodded.
“Done.”
Emily looked at her son.
They had named him Benjamin.
She wondered whether even his name had been part of someone else’s plan.
A detective arrived with the hospital’s compliance officer.
They had searched Margaret’s bag after obtaining consent from security
and police.
Inside was a small notebook.
The embryo ledger.
Emily recognized her father’s handwriting on early pages.
Patient codes.
Retrieval dates.
Fertilization notes.
Transfers.
But the patients were not patients.
They were donors who had never consented.
The compliance officer explained that the records appeared to document
an illegal fertility program operating through a private research wing
more than a decade earlier.
Emily found her own code.
EC-18.
Seven viable embryos.
Her breath caught.
“Seven.”
The officer nodded.
“One became Noah.”
“One became Benjamin.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to the other five?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Emily stared at the page.
Margaret had added later notes in different ink.
N-1 — transfer successful.
N-2 — cryo.
N-3 — cryo.
N-4 — transfer 2018.
Emily stopped.
“2018?”
The officer followed her finger.
“Yes.”
“That was eight years ago.”
Claire squeezed her hand.
Emily kept reading.
N-4 — female live birth.
Her heart stopped.
“There’s a girl.”
The detective spoke carefully.
“Potentially.”
Emily looked up.
“I have a daughter?”
“We need to verify the code.”
Emily’s entire body shook.
Another child.
Somewhere.
Eight years old.
Maybe calling another woman Mom.
Emily suddenly understood why Richard had been desperate to leave before
the results.
The test did not merely threaten their marriage.
It threatened to expose children.
Families.
Crimes.
The detective turned another page.
A name appeared beside N-4.
Not the child’s.
The recipient.
Laura Bennett.
Tyler’s wife.
Emily stared.
Tyler had been married briefly eight years earlier.
His ex-wife had moved to Seattle after their divorce.
They had a daughter.
Sophie.
Emily covered her mouth.
“No.”
Claire leaned closer.
“What?”
Emily whispered:
“Tyler’s daughter.”
The room went silent.
“Sophie might be mine.”
Claire looked stunned.
The detective immediately left to contact Washington authorities.
Emily stared at the ledger.
Tyler had held Benjamin because he knew.
Not because he wanted to steal a random baby.
Because the baby’s DNA could prove what had happened to his own
daughter.
But that did not explain why he had tried to leave.
Emily turned another page.
Beside Sophie’s transfer was a handwritten note:
PATERNAL SAMPLE — R.M.
Emily frowned.
“Who is R.M.?”
Claire looked at her.
“Richard Mercer?”
Emily’s blood ran cold.
If R.M. was Richard, then Sophie was genetically Emily and Richard’s
child.
An embryo created years before Emily and Richard ever became a couple.
She stared at the sleeping baby.
The Mercer family had not simply hidden her biological material.
Someone had been creating children from Emily and Richard before either
of them consented.
Then Claire noticed another notation.
N-5 — transfer scheduled after E.C. marriage.
Emily read it twice.
After E.C. marriage.
May you like
Her marriage.
Someone had planned Benjamin’s birth before she ever agreed to IVF.
