Chapter 6
I don't sleep Thursday night.
I know how they work. I work adjacent to them.
Our clinic doesn't do donor insemination but we share a building with a practice that does, and I've sat in on enough consults to know the process.
You choose a donor from a catalog — physical traits, education, medical history, sometimes a childhood photo.
You book the insemination. The clinic handles everything. It's clinical, efficient, anonymous.
It's also documented.
There would be records. Consent forms. Invoices. A donor number, at minimum. If Jordan used a sperm bank in Nashville, there is a paper trail. A real, traceable, verifiable paper trail.
But I can't access those records. I'm not her doctor.
I'm not her family. I have no legal right to any clinic's patient files.
And even if I did — even if I could somehow verify that Jordan walked into a Nashville fertility clinic in the first week of May and was inseminated with anonymous donor sperm — that would confirm her story.
That would mean she's telling the truth. End of investigation. Case closed.
So why am I not relieved?
I roll onto my side. Ryan shifts in his sleep, moves his arm, settles. I count his breaths. Three in, three out. Three in, three out.
Because the story is too neat. Because Jordan — who tells me everything, who texted me a photo of a UTI test once because she wanted to know if the line looked positive — did the most significant thing a woman can do without telling me.
Decided to become a mother. Chose a donor.
Drove to another city. Got inseminated. Waited.
Found out it worked. And said nothing. For months.
To her best friend who works in reproductive medicine.
And the reason she gives is: she didn't want to hurt me.
Which is kind. Which is thoughtful. Which is exactly what Jordan would say.
But there's something else underneath it.
Something in the way she said "Nashville" and then stopped.
In the way her eyes moved when she caught the word leaving her mouth.
That micro-flinch. I know what data looks like when it contradicts a conclusion — I've seen embryos that grade perfectly and never implant, and I've seen ugly-looking blastocysts become babies.
The surface doesn't always match the interior.
Jordan's surface is smooth. Her story is complete.
And I think she's lying.
* * *
Friday. I go to work. I do my job. Two retrievals.
Three transfers. The lab runs clean. Embryos divide on schedule — 2-cell, 4-cell, 8-cell, morula, blastocyst. The logic of biology.
Predictable, observable, honest. I move between the microscope and the incubator with my usual precision — pipette, transfer, check, record.
The tick of the timer. The hiss of the sterile hood.
The smell of culture media, faintly sweet, like something almost alive.
At lunch, I eat in the break room. Devi sits across from me with a container of rice and sambar. She eats efficiently, the way she does everything — no wasted motion.
"You look like you haven't slept," she says.
"I slept."
"You look like you slept badly."
"Thanks."
She shrugs. Eats another bite. Then: "The pregnant friend."
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Okay." She eats. I eat. The microwave hums. Someone's leftover pasta rotating in the glow.
"She says she used a sperm donor," I say.
Devi's fork pauses. "Used?"
"A clinic in Nashville. She says she went to a fertility clinic and used a donor."
"And you don't believe her."
"I don't — I don't know what I believe." I push my food around. Three circles with my fork. "The math works now. The dates work. It's not — it's not Ryan. I was wrong about that."
"So the problem is solved."
"The problem is that she lied to me for five months about wanting a baby, getting pregnant on purpose, and using medical intervention. And the reason she gives is that she didn't want to hurt my feelings."
Devi sets her fork down. Folds her hands.
"Friends lie about fertility," she says. "Maybe she didn't tell you because your support would have cost you something, and she didn't want to be the reason you paid it."
"That's — very generous of you."
"I'm a generous person." She takes a bite. "But also — you said she went to Nashville."
"Yes."
"Your husband was in Nashville in June."
"Early June. The baby was conceived in early May. Different timing."
"So the Nashville thing is a coincidence."
"Apparently."
Devi is quiet for a moment. Then: "You work in a fertility clinic."
"I'm aware."
"Your husband has stored samples here."
The break room goes very quiet. The microwave has stopped. The pasta sits behind the glass, done rotating, steam pressing against the door.
"What are you saying?" I ask.
"I'm not saying anything." She stands up.
Rinses her container at the sink. Three precise movements — rinse, shake, set in the drying rack.
"I'm just observing that your friend got pregnant using — she says — a sperm donor.
And your husband has frozen samples in the cryo bank.
In the building where you work. Where your badge opens every door. "
"Jordan doesn't have access to our cryo bank."
"No." Devi puts on her lab coat. Snaps the buttons — three of them, top to bottom. "But you do. And your badge lives in an unlocked cubby. And Jordan has been inside this building — the tour you gave her last year. She walked past those cubbies. She saw you clip your badge on and off."
"Devi. That's — you're saying she stole my badge and—"
"I'm not saying anything. I'm a lab technician.
I observe variables and note correlations.
" She smooths her collar. Straightens her ID.
"But if I were a woman who wanted a specific man's genetic material, and I knew where it was stored, and I knew the badge that opens the door sits unattended in an open cubby from 6:47 to 6:59 every single morning while the owner checks first-floor incubators—" She lets the sentence hang. "I'd say that's an exploitable window."
"You think she planned it."
"I think you should look at the access log before you decide what to think." She picks up her lunch container. "Tank 8. Your husband's sample. Check who opened it and when."
She walks out. I sit in the break room alone with the microwave humming and the coffee machine dripping and a thought forming that I don't want to have.
But I'm going to have it anyway. Because Devi is right. The data exists. And I know where to find it.
* * *
The cryo lab is on the second floor. I take the stairs — one flight, twelve steps. My badge beeps at the door. The light goes green. I step in.
It's cold in here. Always cold. The kind of cold that gets into your fingers within thirty seconds and stays there for minutes after you leave.
The liquid nitrogen tanks line the walls — tall steel cylinders with frost creeping up their sides like white moss.
Each one holds hundreds of samples. Eggs.
Sperm. Embryos. Frozen at -196 degrees Celsius.
Suspended. Waiting. The hum of the monitoring system fills the room — low, constant, the sound of vigilance.
Tank 7 holds the sperm samples for IUI and IVF patients.
Tank 8 holds long-term storage — the banked samples from men who are going through chemo, deploying overseas, or just planning ahead.
Ryan's sample is in Tank 8. We stored it three years ago, during our second IVF cycle, because the clinic recommended a backup.
Just in case. One vial. Cryopreserved. His name on the label. My consent form co-signed.
I don't open Tank 8.
I walk to the computer terminal in the corner. The access log system. Every time a tank is opened, the badge that opened it is recorded. Timestamp. Badge ID. Tank number. Duration of access.
I log in. My credentials. My access level.
I pull up Tank 8. Open the access history.
The log loads. Columns of data — date, time, badge, tank, duration.
White text on a dark screen, the kind of interface that hasn't been updated since 2015.
I scroll. Months of entries. Most are mine — quarterly audits, annual inventory checks.
A few are Dr. Parekh's. One is the lab assistant who left last year.
The timestamps are military time. The badge IDs are alphanumeric codes that I know by heart — my own, Devi's, the doctors'.
I scroll to May.
May 3rd. 6:47 AM. Badge ID: CW-2019.
That's me. That's my badge. May 3rd. I was here at 6:47 AM — I'm always here at 6:47 AM. But I didn't open Tank 8 on May 3rd. I would remember. I haven't accessed Ryan's sample since the annual audit in February.
I check the duration. Fourteen minutes. Someone — someone using my badge — had Tank 8 open for fourteen minutes on May 3rd.
My hands are cold. Not from the room. From something else.
I scroll further. Look at the other access points from that morning. Tank 7 accessed at 6:32 AM — badge DV-2022. That's Devi. Normal. She runs the morning tank checks.
But Tank 8. My badge. 6:47 AM. Fourteen minutes.
I try to think. What was I doing at 6:47 AM on May 3rd? I was here. I'm always here. But was I in this room? Did I open that tank?
Or did someone else use my badge?
My badge hangs on a clip inside my locker. Every day. I clip it on when I arrive and clip it off when I leave. The locker doesn't lock — it's a cubby, really, in the break room. Open. Accessible to anyone in the clinic during operating hours.
Anyone.
Three breaths. In through the nose. Hold. Out through the mouth. Three times.
I think about Jordan's voice at the café. I drove to Nashville and— The way she stopped herself. The correction. The story she offered instead.
What if she didn't drive to Nashville?
What if she drove here?
What if the donor wasn't anonymous?
I close the log. Log out. Stand in the cryo lab with the tanks humming around me, holding their frozen cargo at -196 degrees, and I feel the temperature of the room finally match the temperature inside my chest.
Cold. Precise. Clinical.
Someone accessed my husband's sperm sample using my badge on May 3rd.
May 3rd. The same date the ultrasound will later confirm as the conception date.
The same morning I arrived at 6:47 and went straight to the first floor.
The same twelve-minute window when my badge sat in an unlocked cubby in the break room — unattended, available, waiting to be borrowed by someone who knew exactly where it was and exactly how long they had.
Fourteen minutes. That's all it took. Fourteen minutes to steal a vial from a tank, walk out, and return a badge. Fourteen minutes to take something that was supposed to be mine and Ryan's and nobody else's.
And I think I know who.