Chapter 4: The Name He Wouldn't Say
The doctor stepped out to make calls.
The security officers moved into the hallway.
Christopher and I were left alone in the room with Nora still standing near the door, Daisy asleep in a hospital bassinet that a nurse had quietly wheeled in at some point during the last hour.
Nobody had asked her to bring it.
She had simply appeared with it, set it beside the wall, and left without a word.
I looked at Daisy.
She was sleeping with her fist pressed against her cheek.
"You can sit down," I said to Nora.
She sat.
For a moment none of us spoke.
The fluorescent light above us hummed.
"Who is Daisy's father?" I asked.
Nora's jaw tightened.
"He's not in the picture."
"That's not what I asked."
"His name is Marcus Hale." She said it like she had rehearsed saying it without flinching.
"He's forty-four.
We were together for about a year.
When I told him I was pregnant, he told me to get rid of it.
When I said no, he stopped returning my calls."
Christopher's head came up.
"You know that name," I said to him.
"I've heard it."
"From where?"
He was quiet for three full seconds.
"He's a former patient of Dr.
Ellison."
I felt something cold move through me.
Dr.
Patricia Ellison had been my gynecologist for eleven years.
I had stopped seeing her in 2005 when she retired.
Or when I was told she had retired.
"What does Marcus Hale have to do with Patricia Ellison?" I asked.
"He worked for her.
In the early 2000s.
He was a lab technician."
Nora looked between us.
"You know who ran the clinic where I was conceived?"
"I was a patient there," I said.
"For a routine procedure.
In 2002."
The year before the consent form was dated.
I sat back down.
"Christopher.
How long have you known about Ellison?"
"Since Nora contacted me." He pressed his hands together.
"She told me the clinic's name.
I recognized it.
I remembered you going there.
I started looking into it and I found that Ellison's license had been quietly revoked in 2007.
No public statement.
No investigation that I could find.
Just — gone."
"And you didn't tell me."
"I didn't know how much of it was real yet."
"You didn't know how I would react," I said.
"That's different."
He didn't correct me.
Nora was watching us with an expression I couldn't fully read — not hostility, not sympathy.
Something more careful than either.
"There were others," she said quietly.
I looked at her.
"I found a forum.
Women who had the same thing happen.
Genetic matches to children they never knew about.
Most of them had been patients at clinics connected to Ellison's network.
There are at least seven confirmed cases.
Possibly more."
Seven women.
Seven consent forms with forged signatures.
Seven children who grew up not knowing where they came from.
"Does anyone know you found this?" I asked.
"One person." She hesitated.
"A woman named Carol Voss.
She was one of the others.
She's been trying to build a case for two years.
She's the one who told me to find you."
I looked at Christopher.
He was already looking at me.
"We need to call Carol Voss," I said.
"Tonight?"
I glanced at Daisy, still sleeping, fist against her cheek.
"Tonight," I said.
Nora reached into her jacket pocket and placed a folded piece of paper on the table.
A phone number, written in careful block letters.
Beside it, she placed something else.
A photograph.
I picked it up.
It was a picture of a woman I recognized immediately, though I hadn't seen her face in nearly twenty years.
Dr.
Patricia Ellison.
Younger.
Standing outside a building I didn't recognize.
Smiling at the camera.
Standing next to her, his hand on her shoulder, was a man I had never seen before.
Nora tapped the man's face with one finger.
May you like
"That's Marcus Hale," she said.
"Taken in 2001."
