Chapter 6 - The Improbable Truth
The kitchen seemed to spin off its axis.
I stared at the glowing screen of my phone, reading the same sentence three times, four times, five times, hoping the words would rearrange themselves into something that made sense.
Anomaly Detected: Subject exhibits 0% genetic compatibility with maternal birth mother (Audrey Bennett).
“Audrey? What is it?” Chloe asked, her voice sounding faint and distant, like it was coming from the bottom of a well. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. What does the report say?”
I couldn't speak. I turned the phone toward her and placed it flat on the wooden table.
Chloe read the lines. Her eyes widened, her jaw dropping open as she stared at the screen, then up at me.
“Zero percent?” Chloe whispered, her voice cracking. “That’s... that’s impossible. You gave birth to Miles. I was at the hospital! I drove you to the delivery room at Mount Carmel! I held your hand while you were in labor!”
“I know,” I choked out, a sudden wave of nausea rising in my throat. “I remember every second of it. The contractions, the epidural, the nurse handing him to me, the blue hospital cap... I held him while he took his first breath.”
“Then how—?” Chloe grabbed my phone, scrolling frantically through the PDF document. “Is this a fake? Did Derek hack the lab to mess with you?”
“Why would Derek fake a report that proves he is the biological father?” I pointed a shaking finger at the screen. “The paternity test matches Derek 99.99%. But it says I am not his biological mother.”
The terrifying implications of those two sentences crashed down on me with the force of a freight train.
If Derek was the biological father, but I had zero genetic compatibility with the child I had carried for nine months... that meant only one medical possibility existed.
A possibility so monstrous, so unfathomable, that hospitals only admitted it happened once in every few million births.
Embryo mix-up at the fertility clinic.
Or worse—something far more deliberate, orchestrated inside the maternity ward where Colleen Vance had spent twenty-seven years as a senior supervisor.
“Mount Carmel Hospital,” I whispered, the name echoing in my mind like a curse.
“What about it?” Chloe asked, her face pale as paper.
“Where did we do our IVF treatments four years ago?” I looked at my sister, my eyes burning with sudden, blinding clarity. “We didn't go to a private fertility clinic downtown, Chloe. Derek insisted we use the specialized reproductive endocrinology wing at Mount Carmel. Because his mother ‘had connections there.’”
Chloe’s breath caught. “Colleen.”
“Colleen retired from Mount Carmel as the head of the maternity and neonatal ward,” I said, the puzzle pieces snapping together with terrifying precision. “She had access to the cryogenic storage units. She had access to client files. She had access to the delivery schedules.”
“Why would she do that?” Chloe demanded, her voice shaking with rage. “Why would she switch your baby?”
“Because she didn't want just any grandchild,” I said, my voice dropping into a cold, dead calm. “She wanted a grandchild that fit her exact genetic specifications. Or... God help me... she knew whose embryo was sitting in that freezer alongside ours.”
Before Chloe could answer, my phone buzzed again on the table.
May you like
It wasn't an email. It was a text message from an unknown number.
“You shouldn’t have looked at the lab portal, Audrey. Pack a bag. Bring the boy. If you want to know the truth about who birthed your son, be at the old pavilion behind Mount Carmel Hospital in one hour. Come alone. If you call Derek—or the police—you will never see your real child again.”
