Camille’s face went so still that I could almost see her rearranging the last four years of her life inside her head.
Nathan whimpered against her shoulder.
She bounced him automatically, but her eyes never left Reid.
“You knew?”
Reid straightened.
That was what he did whenever he felt control slipping.
He became more formal.
More polished.
More dangerous.
“We’re not discussing private medical information in a hallway.”
Camille laughed once.
It was a broken sound.
“You just discussed Claire’s infertility in a hallway full of strangers.”
Reid’s jaw flexed.
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Camille.”
“How?”
A nurse stepped out from behind the desk.
“Sir, perhaps you should lower your voice.”
Reid turned on her.
“This is a family matter.”
I almost laughed.
Family.
He had spent a year announcing that Camille and Nathan were the family I had failed to give him.
Now the word sounded like a threat.
Dr. Monroe closed the file.
“We should move somewhere private.”
“I agree,” Reid said quickly.
She looked at him.
“I wasn’t asking you.”
For the first time, Camille nearly smiled.
But it disappeared immediately.
Dr. Monroe led us to a small consultation room at the end of the maternity corridor.
I could have left.
Again, I thought about it.
Yet something rooted me there.
Not revenge.
I wish I could say I felt powerful.
I didn’t.
I felt sick.
My marriage had been over for a year, but grief has strange architecture. You can move out of the building and still discover locked rooms inside it.
Dr. Monroe closed the door.
Nathan sat on Camille’s lap.
Reid remained standing.
I took the chair closest to the window.
Dr. Monroe placed the file on the table.
“The clinic where Claire and Reid received treatment closed eighteen months ago. Mercy Harbor acquired its remaining records as part of a patient-continuity agreement.”
Reid folded his arms.
“And?”
“Last week, our records department identified several files with altered summaries.”
My eyes lifted.
“Altered?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“The electronic summaries given to certain patients did not match laboratory originals.”
Reid laughed.
“This is ridiculous.”
Dr. Monroe continued as though he had not spoken.
“When I saw Claire’s name, I remembered her case. I remembered being confused at the time because the treatment plan didn’t align with what I recalled from the diagnostic workup.”
“Why didn’t you say anything then?”
Her expression filled with regret.
“I should have.”
The honesty disarmed me.
“I was a consulting physician. I saw you only twice. Your primary specialist handled the treatment decisions, and I assumed I was missing information that had been documented elsewhere.”
“Who was the specialist?”
“Dr. Martin Keane.”
I remembered him.
Gray hair.
Soft voice.
Always rushed.
He had retired six months before our divorce.
Dr. Monroe opened the folder.
“According to the original laboratory records, your results were generally reassuring. Reid’s were not.”
Reid paced toward the window.
“Stop saying that like it’s definitive.”
Dr. Monroe turned to him.
“Would you like me to read the numbers?”
He stopped.
“No.”
“Then stop pretending this is speculation.”
Camille’s voice was almost inaudible.
“What exactly was wrong?”
Dr. Monroe paused.
“I’m not going to discuss every detail of someone’s diagnosis without consent.”
“Convenient,” Reid muttered.
“But,” she added, “I can say the documented findings made natural conception highly improbable.”
Camille stared at Nathan.
Her lips parted.
“No.”
Reid crouched beside her.
“Listen to me.”
She recoiled.
“Don’t touch me.”
His hand froze.
“Camille.”
“You told me Claire was infertile.”
“I told you what we were told.”
Dr. Monroe immediately corrected him.
“No. The file shows you were informed directly.”
Reid looked at her.
“You weren’t in that appointment.”
“The signed acknowledgment is in the record.”
Camille looked at me.
For the first time since I had known about the affair, she didn’t look triumphant.
She looked terrified.
“Claire... did you know?”
“No.”
Her eyes filled.
I felt no instinct to comfort her.
That surprised me.
For years, comforting Camille had been automatic.
Her bad dates.
Her father’s death.
Career problems.
Breakups.
I had taken midnight calls from her.
Driven three hours when her mother had surgery.
Made her maid of honor at my wedding.
Then she slept with my husband while carrying soup into my house and telling me to keep fighting for my marriage.
Some betrayals destroy affection so completely that even another person’s tears cannot reach what used to be there.
Camille swallowed.
“Then why did all your treatments fail?”
Dr. Monroe answered.
“Because they were designed around an inaccurate diagnosis.”
My fingers tightened around the armrests.
“What does that mean?”
“The treatment plans repeatedly targeted Claire. Based on these records, the more medically appropriate approach would have addressed the male factor or discussed other reproductive options from the beginning.”
I closed my eyes.
Injection needles in my bathroom drawer.
Bruises on my stomach.
Hormone headaches.
Procedures.
Appointments where Reid stared at his phone.
All of it.
“What would have happened if I’d known?”
Dr. Monroe chose her words carefully.
“You would have had choices.”
That hurt more than anything else.
Choices.
I had lost years believing there were none.
Reid stood.
“This has gone far enough.”
I opened my eyes.
“Sit down.”
His face changed.
During our marriage, I rarely spoke to him that way.
Maybe that was why he obeyed.
Camille looked at him.
“Why?”
He rubbed a hand over his mouth.
“I didn’t falsify anything.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“It was complicated.”
I laughed softly.
Four years of suffering had apparently been complicated.
“You let me believe it was me.”
“I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“You signed the report.”
He looked at me.
“You wanted children more than anything.”
“So?”
“What was I supposed to say?”
“The truth.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
The absurdity was almost breathtaking.
“Protect me?”
“You would have looked at me differently.”
I stared at him.
There it was.
Not love.
Not confusion.
Shame.
Reid Halbrook could tolerate my pain.
He could not tolerate his own imperfection.
“You let me hate myself so you wouldn’t have to feel embarrassed.”
His eyes hardened.
“That’s not fair.”
“No. Fair would have been you telling me the truth before I spent years injecting hormones into my body.”
Camille looked at him.
“And then you told me you got Claire pregnant twice and she miscarried.”
I turned toward her.
“What?”
Silence.
Camille’s hand flew to her mouth.
Reid closed his eyes.
I stood slowly.
“What did you just say?”
She looked horrified.
“He told me...”
“What?”
“He said you had gotten pregnant twice.”
I could hear my pulse.
“And?”
“He said you lost both pregnancies because you wouldn’t follow medical advice.”
I stared at Reid.
“That never happened.”
Camille went pale.
“He said you blamed him.”
“That never happened.”
“He said you refused to stop drinking wine.”
“I barely drank during treatment.”
Her face crumpled.
“Oh my God.”
Reid stood.
“I was trying to explain why the marriage was over.”
“You invented miscarriages?”
I had thought I knew the worst thing he could do.
I had been wrong again.
He stepped toward me.
“Claire—”
“Don’t say my name.”
He stopped.
Nathan started crying.
Camille stood and paced with him, pressing her cheek to his hair.
The baby’s distress pulled everyone out of the confrontation for several seconds.
Then Camille asked the question hanging over the room.
“If Reid couldn’t father a child naturally...”
She stopped.
No one wanted to complete it.
Reid’s voice turned cold.
“Nathan is my son.”
Dr. Monroe looked at him.
“I did not say otherwise.”
“But you’re implying it.”
“I’m saying biology needs evidence, not volume.”
Camille stared at him.
“You told me you had repeat testing after the divorce.”
“I did.”
“Where?”
He hesitated.
“A private clinic.”
“Which clinic?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
“I’ll find the paperwork.”
Camille’s expression changed.
She knew his lies.
She had once helped him build them.
Now she could recognize the architecture.
“There is no paperwork, is there?”
Reid’s silence answered.
She shifted Nathan onto her other hip.
“Take the test.”
“What?”
“A paternity test.”
His face darkened.
“Absolutely not.”
Camille recoiled as though he had slapped the table.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not dignifying this.”
“Dignifying?”
“Some doctor sees an old test and suddenly you’re questioning our son?”
“Our son?”
Her voice rose.
“You just refused to prove he’s yours.”
Reid looked at me.
And there it was.
Blame.
Even now.
“You’re enjoying this.”
I stared at him.
“No.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not.”
“You’ve been waiting for this.”
“I didn’t even know you’d be here.”
“Of course you did. You always have some plan.”
The old Claire would have defended herself.
The old Claire would have explained.
I didn’t.
Instead I said, “You humiliated me five minutes ago because you thought I was still ashamed.”
He said nothing.
“I’m not ashamed anymore.”
That landed.
Dr. Monroe touched my arm gently.
“There is something else.”
Reid’s eyes snapped toward her.
“What?”
She ignored him.
“Claire, after finding the discrepancy, Mercy Harbor’s legal department reviewed access logs from the old clinic database.”
My stomach tightened.
“And?”
“The reports weren’t changed by a physician.”
“Then who changed them?”
She looked at Reid.
“A user account tied to an outside administrator.”
Reid went completely still.
Dr. Monroe continued.
“The company that managed Harbor Reproductive Medicine’s billing and records system at the time was Halbrook Health Solutions.”
I stared at my ex-husband.
Halbrook Health Solutions had been one of Reid’s earliest technology companies.
I had helped him finance it.
Camille whispered, “Reid.”
He backed toward the door.
“You need a lawyer before you start making accusations.”
Dr. Monroe’s voice was calm.
“I’m not making accusations.”
She lifted the file.
“I’m telling Claire why the hospital’s compliance office asked her to come upstairs after her foundation meeting.”
I frowned.
“They asked for me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Dr. Monroe looked at me.
“Because Claire Mercer wasn’t the only patient whose records were changed.”
The room fell silent.
“How many?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Reid opened the door.
Camille stared at him.
“Where are you going?”
“To call counsel.”
“What about me?”
He looked at her.
“What about you?”
I watched the realization spread across her face.
A year earlier, she had helped him abandon me.
Now, with one sentence, he was preparing to do the same thing to her.
Camille looked down at Nathan.
Then back at Reid.
“Take the paternity test.”
“No.”
“If you walk out that door, I’m doing it without you.”
Reid’s eyes hardened.
“You wouldn’t.”
She held his gaze.
“You taught me what happens when a woman believes you without checking.”
For the first time that morning, Reid had no answer.
He walked out.
The door closed behind him.
Camille stood holding her child, tears running silently down her face.
I looked at Dr. Monroe.
“You said there were other patients.”
She nodded.
“How many records?”
“We’re still auditing.”
“How many?”
Her hesitation told me the number wasn’t small.
“At least forty-seven.”
I felt sick.
Forty-seven women.
Forty-seven couples.
Forty-seven families.
And Reid’s company had been inside the system.
Camille sank into a chair.
Then her phone vibrated.
She looked at the screen.
Her face changed.
“What?”
She didn’t answer.
“Camille?”
She turned the phone toward me.
It was a notification from the Claire Mercer Family Foundation’s banking system.
A transfer request had just been initiated.
Amount:
$2,800,000.
Destination:
A private holding company I had never seen before.
Authorization requested by:
Camille Dorsey.
She stared at me.
“I didn’t do this.”
I took the phone.
Another notification appeared.
Then another.
Someone was moving money.
And the only person who had left the room was Reid.
---