The following morning, a records coordinator telephoned to confirm my identity. I had expected a routine response about how long copies would take. Instead, her tone changed as she studied what appeared on her screen. She mentioned something in my file that made me dizzy.

“It appears there may be a third-party reproductive arrangement attached to your account,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not authorized to interpret the file over the phone. We’ll send the records as soon as we can.”

I requested an account-access audit as well. She agreed to include it. Her cautious assurances suggested the clinic might already suspect trouble.

Later, hospital nurse Tessa privately mentioned that my chart had been accessed three weeks previously, with no appointment scheduled. Unable to name the person, she suggested requesting its access history.

Before she could add anything, security delivered a folder Peter had left at reception, claiming it established my prior knowledge of the agreement.

On its opening page sat a signature resembling mine, beneath my name. The date was two months before Peter and I had first entered the fertility clinic.

PART 2: A Signature From Before We Met

Rachel contacted Naomi Blake, a lawyer experienced in reproductive and family law. Naomi visited that afternoon, examined the document and protected it in a sleeve.

“Don’t sign anything else, and don’t send this document back to the clinic yet,” she said. “We need to preserve what you were given and find out where it came from.”

I stared at the handwriting.

“I didn’t sign it.”

“Then we’ll establish that.”

Asked about the date, I recalled attending a family wedding with Peter in Portland, Maine. Rachel possessed photographs, my credit-card record would confirm our hotel, and the wedding program named both of us. Naomi noted each detail before asking about Dr. Alan Whitaker, who supervised fertility treatment.

“Peter chose him,” I said. “He told me Dr. Whitaker had a strong record with high-risk pregnancies.”

“Did you ever meet with him alone?”

“No.”

“Did he explain the embryo transfer himself?”

“Peter was always there.”

Naomi instructed the clinic to preserve all material related to my treatment and barred Peter from obtaining my hospital information or making decisions about my care. Those precautions frightened me, yet the limits also offered relief. I had spent so long allowing Peter to speak during appointments that claiming the authority to decide who could see me or my records felt unfamiliar. Naomi treated that authority as something unquestionably mine.

Records arrived the next day. Most seemed routine: prescriptions, appointment summaries, bills, and scans. But the embryology pages were different. Three embryo identification numbers were obscured as “confidential third-party information.” My transfer was described as a gestational-carrier procedure, and an electronic consent was connected to an email address I’d never owned.

“That isn’t my account.”

Naomi zoomed in. The profile originated on a device assigned to Peter’s office. A later entry documented a username change; the initial access details had disappeared from the active account.

Clinic compliance director Martin Cole arrived with the coordinator. When Naomi demanded preservation of earlier versions, he acknowledged that some old lab entries had been removed from the active record. One explicitly stated that the embryos came from my eggs and Peter’s sperm, precisely as I’d requested.

The newer documents contradicted it, assigning three family-linked letters to those embryos and identifying them as third-party material.

“Who changed those labels?” Naomi demanded.

Martin said an investigation was underway.

“And why was the original note removed?”

He couldn’t explain. The absence of an answer was almost as disturbing as the altered labels. Documents that should have provided certainty were turning into evidence that someone had rewritten the history of my own treatment.

The coordinator, Mara, appeared distressed. She said Dr. Whitaker claimed the documentation was handled privately between the “intended parents.” On transfer day, Mara had questioned whether I’d signed a third-party consent, but he assured her everything was signed. She hadn’t personally examined it and had allowed the procedure to continue.

“I should have asked you,” she said quietly.

“You should have,” I replied. “But you didn’t create this.”

Naomi discovered another impossible date in an agreement involving Audrey Miller’s relatives. Audrey had died years before the contract was supposedly signed. Her parents, Ellen and George, joined Naomi on video that night. According to Peter, Audrey’s preserved eggs had produced an embryo and I’d volunteered to carry their grandchild. He’d even mailed them an ultrasound photo labeled with Audrey’s name.

Ellen struggled to speak.

“He told us our daughter’s final wish was to have a child. We wanted to believe we could help make that happen.”

I answered with difficulty.

“He used my pregnancy to make you believe that.”

“We’re so sorry,” Ellen said.

They’d saved all of Peter’s paperwork. A laboratory notification among it confirmed Audrey’s preserved material had never been used. Her purported agreement was fabricated. Ellen and George had held onto those papers because they thought they preserved a connection to their daughter. I realized Peter had exploited not only my desire to become a mother but also their longing to remember Audrey.

The clinic also identified three more embryos made from my eggs and Peter’s sperm. Although records marked them discarded, inventory couldn’t establish their destruction. The most recent transfer request involving them used an unfamiliar name.

That night, the contractions intensified and quickened. Doctors monitored me, administered medicine intended to postpone birth, and warned premature babies might require intensive care. Peter’s lawyer meanwhile petitioned the court urgently, alleging I’d agreed to carry children for three different families and should not make decisions concerning them without notifying those families.

His petition portrayed me as confused and emotionally unstable, omitting the original laboratory evidence, altered records, and impossible contract dates. Seeing my own circumstances described that way was exhausting. I was fighting premature labor while another version of me, invented on paper, was being presented to a court. I couldn’t finish reading.

“He’s trying to make it sound as if I don’t know my own life,” I said.

“Then we keep the record factual,” Naomi replied. “We don’t let him pull you into a fight that belongs in evidence.”

Another woman, Harper, soon called Naomi. Peter had assured her that one transferred embryo contained her genetic material and she’d receive a baby after delivery. He’d collected money from her for purported legal and administrative costs. Harper had also received a clinic notice saying an embryo associated with her was transferred under my name.

“I never wanted to take a baby from another woman,” she told me, close to tears.

“Neither of us caused this,” I said.

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