Then Desmond said something that made my whole body go cold.
“If this isn’t the Kavanagh baby,” he hissed, “then where’s ours?”
I looked down at the infant in my arms, a child I had carried, delivered, and loved for exactly forty minutes, and understood, all at once, that she might not belong to anyone standing in that room.
“What did you just say?” I asked, my voice barely working.
Desmond looked like he wished he could take the words back.
“Nothing,” he said. “Forget it.”
“You said Kavanagh,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt. “Who is Kavanagh?”
Paige’s face had gone pale, the same pale as her husband’s a minute earlier.
“A family from the clinic,” she finally admitted. “Another couple. We weren’t supposed to know their name. It slipped out once, on paperwork Desmond wasn’t supposed to see.”
“Why would their name matter right now?”
Neither of them answered.
The baby whimpered against my chest, small and warm and utterly unaware of the storm building around her, and I found myself instinctively swaying, soothing a stranger’s child while the two people who should have wanted her most stood frozen on the other side of the room.
A nurse, a woman named Priti, stepped further into the room, clearly sensing something was deeply wrong.
“Is everything alright in here?”
“No,” I said. “Nothing is alright. I need someone from the fertility clinic. Right now.”
Priti left quickly, returning a few minutes later with a doctor I didn’t recognize, a tired-looking woman introduced as Dr. Osei, head of the OB unit, pulled in specifically because of the commotion.
“What’s the concern?” Dr. Osei asked, looking between all of us.
“My sister and her husband are saying this isn’t their baby,” I said. “And they mentioned another family. Kavanagh.”
Dr. Osei’s expression shifted, just slightly, a flicker of recognition she tried and failed to fully hide.
“How do you know that name?” she asked carefully, addressing Desmond directly now.
“It doesn’t matter how,” Desmond said. “Is it true? Is there a problem with the embryos?”
“I can’t discuss another patient’s records,” Dr. Osei said. “But I take concerns like this extremely seriously. Let me make some calls.”
“Let me make some calls,” she said. “Please don’t leave this room.”
She left, and the four of us, five counting the baby, sat in a silence heavier than anything I’d ever experienced.
“Someone needs to explain this to me,” I said. “Now. Not later.”
Desmond finally spoke, his voice low.
“Bellmont Fertility ran two embryo transfers the same week,” he said. “Ours, and another couple’s. The Kavanaghs. We only found out because of a scheduling mix-up on an old form, months ago. We were told it was corrected. We were told it didn’t matter.”
“When exactly did you find out about this scheduling mix-up?” I asked, something cold settling in my stomach. “Before or after I got pregnant?”
