Chapter 3 - A Patient Before She Became a Wife
Natalie waited until midnight.
Mark had fallen asleep after two glasses of bourbon. Diane’s bedroom light went dark at eleven-thirty, though Natalie knew that did not always mean the older woman was asleep.
She slipped from bed and carried the fertility forms into the laundry room.
The patient number appeared beneath her full name.
NATALIE MAY MERCER.
Date registered: October 14, twelve years earlier.
The name was wrong for that date.
Twelve years ago, Natalie had still been Natalie May Ellis.
She had been nineteen, living in a dormitory nearly four hundred miles from Bellhaven. She had never visited the Mercer family’s clinic.
Yet the form listed her current address, current emergency contact, and current blood type.
At the bottom was a handwritten notation.
Previous response satisfactory.
Proceed to stage four.
Natalie photographed every page with the hidden phone.
Then she searched the institute’s name.
The Bellhaven Reproductive Institute had no public website. A business registry listed it as a private research clinic owned by Marrow Health Holdings.
Natalie searched Marrow.
Dozens of companies appeared.
Marrow Diagnostics.
Marrow Women’s Care.
Marrow Surgical Supply.
Marrow Family Development Foundation.
The symbol beside each name matched the divided circle on Diane’s silver box.
She clicked through an old newspaper archive.
A photograph loaded slowly.
MERCER FAMILY DONATES NEW MATERNITY WING.
The image showed Diane, Mark’s father, and Mark’s grandfather cutting a ribbon outside Bellhaven Memorial Hospital.
Standing behind them was a young physician.
Doctor Ethan Cole.
Natalie enlarged the article.
The photograph was thirteen years old.
The caption identified Ethan as a resident physician assigned to a maternal-health study funded by the Mercer Foundation.
Natalie stared at his younger face.
She had seen him before.
Not at the hospital.
Somewhere else.
She closed her eyes.
A memory rose.
White curtains.
A humming fluorescent light.
A man wearing a surgical mask.
She had been nineteen, feverish and confused in a university clinic after collapsing during an exam. The nurse told her she was dehydrated. She remembered a doctor checking her eyes with a small light.
Had that doctor been Ethan?
The memory vanished before she could grasp it.
Floorboards creaked above her.
Natalie shut down the phone and hid it inside a detergent box.
The laundry-room door opened.
Diane stood in the doorway.
“What are you doing?”
“Mark spilled something on his shirt.”
“At midnight?”
“He needs it tomorrow.”
Diane entered.
Her eyes moved across the machines, the counter, the open box of detergent.
Natalie forced herself not to look at it.
Diane picked up the medical forms.
“You took these from the dining room.”
“I wanted to read them.”
“That should have happened before you refused.”
“I have questions.”
“You will ask the doctor.”
“Why was I registered twelve years ago?”
Diane did not react.
Natalie watched her closely.
“The form says I was already a patient.”
“Clerical error.”
“It uses my married name.”
“Computer systems update names.”
“It says previous response satisfactory.”
Diane folded the papers.
“You have spent too much time filling your head with nonsense.”
“What happened to me twelve years ago?”
For the first time, the older woman’s expression shifted.
Only slightly.
But Natalie saw it.
Recognition.
Diane stepped closer.
“You were a troubled young woman.”
“You didn’t know me.”
“Mark knew you.”
Natalie’s breath stopped.
“What?”
Diane smiled.
“Go back to bed.”
“Mark and I met six years ago.”
“Did you?”
A cold sensation traveled down Natalie’s spine.
Diane turned toward the door.
Natalie caught her arm.
“What does that mean?”
Diane looked down at Natalie’s hand.
“Remove it.”
“Tell me.”
“Your husband selected you long before you selected him.”
Natalie released her.
Diane’s smile widened.
Then she walked away with the forms.
Natalie remained in the laundry room until she heard the bedroom doors close again.
She retrieved the hidden phone.
A notification glowed on the screen.
Someone had attempted to access her secret email account.
The login location was Bellhaven.
Inside the sent folder, every photograph she had uploaded was gone.
Only one new message remained.
No sender.
No subject.
May you like
Three words in the body.
STOP DIGGING, NATALIE.
