Chapter 8: Everything That Was Taken
The attorney's name was Grace Okafor.
She arrived at two o'clock exactly, carrying a leather briefcase and wearing the expression of someone who had heard many difficult things and been surprised by very few of them.
She was not unsurprised by this.
We sat in a family consultation room on the fourth floor — me, Grace, Michael, and a hospital administrator named Mr.
Petersen who had been summoned at short notice and looked like he would have preferred to be anywhere else.
Grace set a notepad on the table.
"Let's start from the beginning."
We went through it.
All of it.
The clinic.
The transfer authorization.
Finch's copies.
Patricia Hale's involvement.
Michael's account of the calls four years ago.
The letter from Diane's mother that had gone unanswered.
Mr.
Petersen's face went progressively grayer as the meeting continued.
"Dr.
Hale has been on staff here for nine years," he said at one point, as if this were a defense.
"Yes," Grace said pleasantly.
"That's going to be relevant to the hospital's liability exposure."
He stopped offering observations after that.
At three-thirty, Grace set her pen down.
"Here's where we are.
The medical board complaint is the clearest path.
The documentation Finch provided establishes both Voss and Hale's involvement in an unauthorized procedure performed without patient consent.
That's a serious violation regardless of when it occurred." She looked at me.
"On the crjminal side, the statute of limitations is more complicated.
But the DA's office has been taking a harder look at fertility fraud cases in the last few years.
I have a contact there.
It's worth a conversation."
"What about Harlan Voss?" I asked.
"He's seventy-one.
Living in Arizona.
He's still licensed, which is remarkable and will not continue to be the case." She made a note.
"I'll file the board complaint this week.
Both names."
Mr.
Petersen shifted in his chair.
"The hospital will of course cooperate fully with any—"
"The hospital will provide the complete patient file for the relevant period," Grace said.
"Including any records related to the Lakeview transfers that may have been flagged or reviewed internally." She looked at him directly.
"I'll need confirmation that no records have been modified or removed since last night."
His throat moved.
"I'll look into that."
"Today," Grace said.
"Today," he agreed.
After the meeting, Grace walked with me to the elevator.
"How are you holding up?" she asked.
"I'm not sure yet," I said honestly.
She nodded.
"That's a reasonable answer." She pressed the button.
"For what it's worth — the documentation Finch gave you is strong.
He kept good copies.
Whatever his reasons, he kept them carefully."
"He said he wanted to put it down."
"Sometimes that's enough." The elevator arrived.
She stepped in and turned.
"I'll call you tomorrow.
And Carol — what was done to you was wrong.
Clearly, specifically, documentably wrong.
That matters."
The doors closed.
I stood in the hallway for a moment.
Then I went back to Diane's room.
She was awake, Lucy in the bassinet beside her.
Daniel had gone to get food.
The room was quiet in the late-afternoon light.
"How did it go?" Diane asked.
"Well, I think." I sat in the chair beside her.
"There's a lawyer.
She's filing complaints against both of them this week.
Voss and Hale."
Diane was quiet for a moment.
"My mother tried for years to get someone to listen."
"I know."
"She never stopped believing someone would." Her voice was careful, like she was carrying something fragile.
"She made me promise, before she p@ssed, that I'd keep trying.
That I'd find you." She looked at Lucy.
"I almost didn't.
After she was gone, I thought — what's the point.
It won't bring her back.
It won't change anything."
"What made you keep going?"
Diane looked up at me.
"I found out I was pregnant.
And I thought — this baby is going to want to know where she came from.
And I didn't have all the answers.
But maybe you did."
I looked at Lucy.
She was sleeping with her fists curled beside her face, the way newborns do, as if they are still holding on to wherever they came from.
"I don't have all the answers either," I said.
"But I have some of them now."
Diane nodded slowly.
Then, quietly: "What happens now?
With — with us.
I'm not asking for anything.
I just want to know if—"
"You're not a stranger to me," I said.
"That's where I am right now.
I don't know all the shapes of what this becomes.
But you're not a stranger."
She pressed her lips together.
Her eyes filled.
"My mother would have liked you," she said.
"Tell me about her," I said.
So she did.
For the next hour, while the light changed outside the window and Lucy slept and Daniel came back with sandwiches and sat quietly in the corner eating without interrupting, Diane told me about Ellen Marsh.
The woman who had raised her.
Who had kept a folded piece of paper in a box under her bed for twenty-two years.
Who had never stopped believing that the truth deserved to be known.
I listened to all of it.
When she finished, we were quiet for a while.
"She sounds like someone who didn't give up easily," I said.
"She wasn't." Diane almost smiled.
"She was stubborn as anything."
I thought about a woman I had never met, carrying a secret that wasn't hers to carry, trying for two decades to put it in the right hands.
"She got it to you," I said.
"In the end."
May you like
Diane looked down at Lucy.
"She did," she said softly.
