Chapter 8 - THE CONSENT FORM
The clinic's medical director met me with a privacy officer and a lawyer.
I handed over the photographed document without giving them the original.
The doctor looked stunned.
“That form should not be in your husband's possession unless you provided it to him,” she said.
“I did not.”
A preliminary review showed that my records had been accessed by a temporary administrative employee shortly before the first anonymous warning.
The employee had resigned without notice.
The clinic began its formal privacy investigation and preserved audit logs.
Rebecca reported the suspected unauthorized access to the appropriate authorities.
Meanwhile Daniel traced a payment to the former employee from a business managed by Brooke.
The amount was small compared with the millions in question.
It was enough to create a deeply troubling question.
What had the family wanted from my medical history?
The answer began with a storage agreement.
Years earlier, during fertility treatment, Trent and I had discussed embryo preservation.
The treatments had not led to an ongoing pregnancy, but the clinic had retained a limited set of reproductive records and consents.
I had since withdrawn from treatment.
Rebecca insisted that no one jump to conclusions about what the records meant.
Then the clinic confirmed that someone had attempted to obtain a duplicate copy of a joint-consent authorization using a suspicious identification document.
My hands turned cold.
“Could someone use that to make decisions for me?”
“Not through proper procedures,” the clinic's lawyer said.
“We have safeguards.”
He promised a full review.
Outside, I found forty-seven missed calls from unknown numbers.
The voicemail messages accused me of harming Brooke's unborn child by taking away financial support.
One caller said that barren women should stop interfering with real mothers.
I deleted none of them.
Daniel returned with news that briefly silenced the room.
A transfer labeled prenatal family planning had gone from GLW Family Holdings to a private medical office seven months earlier.
The recipient was not Brooke.
It was Adrian Cole's wife.
His wife was a physician named Dr. Lena Cole.
When we contacted her lawyer, we received a startling reply.
Dr. Cole had no knowledge of any such payment, and the office listed on the wire was not hers.
Someone had used a lookalike business name to make the transactions appear medical.
That evening an envelope arrived addressed to me in my own handwriting.
I opened it with Rebecca present.
Inside was a photograph of Brooke taken outside a hospital.
She was not alone.
A man stood beside her with his hand against her back.
He was not Trent.
He was Caleb Lawson.
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On the reverse, someone had written the date of Brooke's next prenatal appointment.
