18. Elena #2
Participant agrees to reasonable access for safety inspections, maintenance, and welfare checks.
There.
Participant consents to entry without advance notice where clinically indicated or where participant wellbeing may be compromised.
I read that twice. Then a third time.
Without advance notice. Clinically indicated. Participant wellbeing may be compromised. The wording is broad enough to mean almost anything if the person applying it already believes his judgment is correct.
Stress. Mood. Missed appointment. Refusal of delivery. Sleeping badly. Looking angry in his office. Existing in a way that makes him decide supervision should increase.
I turn another page.
Utilities included under program housing support.
Managed account holder: Brennan Reproductive Services.
I stop. Read it again.
Managed account holder.
Not me. The program.
Which means the internet isn’t mine, either.
That thought lands with clean, unpleasant precision.
I set the folder down and reach for my phone.
The phone’s payment statements are all in an email folder I stopped opening because they were boring and automatic and, I assumed, irrelevant.
Covered by the program. Another thing handled.
Another thing I didn’t need to think about.
I search for the most recent statement and open it.
Billed to: Brennan Reproductive Services, Participant Communications Program.
My mouth goes dry.
Usage summary available to account administrator upon request.
That doesn’t necessarily mean anyone is checking anything. It doesn’t necessarily mean messages are being read or calls reviewed or search terms dropped neatly into his inbox every morning.
But it means they could.
And that fact changes the room around me.
I look up. The router on the shelf beside the television. The thermostat on the wall. The clinic app on my phone. Appointment reminders. Building entry downstairs. Housing portal. Meal delivery notifications.
Not separate services. One system.
That’s what I missed. Housing over here. Medical care over there. Financial support somewhere else. I kept thinking of them as linked only by paperwork. But they’re all part of the same machine.
And all of it routes back to Cormac.
I stand, walking to the router before I’ve fully decided to. Turn it around. Read the sticker on the back.
Property of brS Network Support.
Of course it is. I sit back on my heels.
For a second, I consider unplugging it. Turning off the phone.
Pulling the whole thing down in whatever small ways I still can.
It’s a childish impulse, which doesn’t make it less satisfying to imagine.
No notifications. No portal. No connection in the wall that belongs to him more than it belongs to me.
But then what?
I still need the phone. The clinic app. The housing portal.
The internet for banking and groceries and weather and all the ordinary pieces of life that are now integrated into the program’s infrastructure.
The system has been built into daily function thoroughly enough that rejecting it means rejecting day-to-day function.
Smart.
I sit on the floor beside the sofa and lean back against it, one hand moving to my stomach without thought.
Seventeen weeks. That should feel personal.
Instead, it feels managed. Not just by medicine, which I understood.
Which I signed for. But by the infrastructure around the medicine.
The part that extends into the apartment and the phone and the internet and the keys until privacy becomes a contract technicality instead of a fact.
A thought arrives so cleanly, it almost steadies me.
Test it.
I look at the router. The small green light blinks back.
Test it.
Because right now, all I have are insinuations. Clauses. Billing language. Administrative vagueness broad enough to frighten, but tidy enough to be explained away if I push too hard.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is just standard support wrapped in unpleasant paperwork. Maybe no one is actually checking anything.
There’s one easy way to find out.
I stand, pick up my phone, and open the browser. My thumb hovers over the search bar for half a second.
Then I type: how to break a surrogacy contract in Ireland. I stare at the words before I hit search. It feels illicit in a way typing shouldn’t.
I press enter, and the results appear immediately. Legal pages. Forums. A solicitor’s website. Generic articles about surrogacy law and enforceability and intended parent agreements. Nothing dramatic. No alerts. No visible consequences. Just information.
I click on two links, then a third. The language is technical enough to be irritating and vague enough to be useless.
Rights. Obligations. Contractual limits.
Legal uncertainty. Which is really just a long way of saying everything depends on leverage and interpretation and who can afford to make things difficult.
Not me.
I search again: can account holder see internet search history wifi
Then: phone plan account administrator usage access
Then: program housing privacy rights Ireland
The results are even less comforting. Terms vary. Providers differ. Managed housing plans may allow access to certain service data. Account administrators may review usage depending on support agreements. Just enough uncertainty to make paranoia look unreasonable and caution look necessary.
I put the phone face down on the table. The apartment is very quiet.
Too quiet.
I spend the afternoon trying to convince myself I’m overreacting.
I unpack the kitchen containers, because leaving them boxed up would be too obvious.
I move the flowers from the counter to the table, because at least there, I don’t have to see them every time I make tea.
I put the three pregnancy guides on the new shelf because the empty space annoys me more than the fact that someone else already moved them once.
At some point, I fold my throw over the arm of the new chair. I stare at it for a full ten seconds. It feels like betrayal.
Or adaptation. Which is probably worse.
By evening, the room works better than it did yesterday. That’s the problem. The lamp beside the sofa throws even warmer light. The chair actually supports my back. The new, sharp knives make dinner easier to put together. The bedding, when I press my hand against it, feels inviting.
Every comfort makes the same argument. See? it says. This is helpful. This is reasonable. This is care.
I make more tea I don’t want and sit in the chair. Standing on principle in the apartment would be too pathetic, even for me.
The chair is excellent. I resent it already.
My phone buzzes on the side table, and my body tenses before I look.
Appointment reminder: 10:00 AM. Routine monitoring. Arrive hydrated.
Of course. Tomorrow.
* * *
In the morning, the clinic looks exactly the same as it always does. Walsh takes my vitals with her usual precision. Blood pressure. Weight. Urine sample. Questions about sleep and appetite and nausea.
Then, without looking up from the chart, she says, “Have the apartment adjustments improved your comfort?”
Apartment adjustments. Not strangers in my bedroom. Not the discovery that none of the infrastructure around my life actually belongs to me. Comfort.
I hear myself say, “Fine.”
She makes a note. “Any ongoing stress?”
“What kind of stress?”
“The usual kind,” she says. “Mood. Sleep. Environment.”
Environment . I almost laugh.
“No more than before.”
Another note. Then: “Dr. Brennan wants to review your chart before you go. Wait in his office.”
Of course he does.
His office door is open when I get there. He’s at the window when I step inside, file in hand, posture erect as ever.
He turns. “Elena.”
“Dr. Brennan.”
“Sit.”
I do, because I want to know what he knows before I react.
He looks down at the file. “Your vitals are acceptable,” he says. “Blood pressure slightly improved. Weight stable.” A page turns. “You should be sleeping better.”
Not a question. My chest tightens once. Because of course that’s where my mind goes first: the new bedding, the better pillows, the implication that even my sleep now folds neatly into the category of adjustments he can make and outcomes he can track.
“I sleep how I sleep,” I say.
His gaze lifts. “Not ideally.”
I say nothing. He closes the file.
“The housing adjustments were appropriate.”
I scoff. “They were uninvited.”
“Not relevant.”
“That’s convenient.”
“It’s accurate.”
The room becomes very quiet. He studies me for one beat too long, then says, “Participant stress often presents as oppositional behavior in the domestic environment. That doesn’t make the environment less in need of stabilization.”
I stare at him. It takes effort not to laugh. Not because it’s funny. Because it’s obscene. This man can explain anything to himself. That’s his real talent. Build a cage, improve the cushions, call it stabilization.
“You really do have a term for everything,” I say.
“Yes.” Then he adds, almost idly, “You should use the internet connection for things that are actually useful.”
For a second, I don’t understand. The sentence just hangs there, strange and clean and almost meaningless. Then it lands, and my whole body goes still.
He knows. Not necessarily everything. Not necessarily exactly what I searched, or how much he saw, or through what route it reached him. But enough. Enough to say those words. Enough to let me know the line I suspected is real.
I hear my own voice flatten. “Useful, how?”
His expression doesn’t change. “Pregnancy research,” he says. “Nutrition. Symptom tracking. Developmental milestones. There are more productive uses of program resources than catastrophizing about contractual breach.”
Contractual breach. Not the actual words I typed. But close enough that the difference barely matters.
The air in the room feels thinner all at once. I stand before I’ve fully decided to. The chair shifts softly against the floor.
His eyes lift immediately. “Sit down.”
“No.” The word comes out steadier than I feel.
Something unreadable moves through his face. Not surprise. Not apology. Assessment, maybe.
“You’re overreacting,” he says.
To that, of all things, I almost smile. “Am I?”
“Yes.”
“You brought people into my apartment. You changed my bed. The internet is in the program’s name. Even my phone is billed through the clinic.” My grip tightens on my bag strap. “And now you’re giving me browsing advice.”
His expression stays infuriatingly calm. “I’m responsible for the entire arrangement.”
There it is. Not monitored. Responsible. Always one clean word away from the thing itself.
“And that means what, exactly?”
“It means the resources provided to you exist for your support.”
Not an answer. Or maybe it is, if what he wants me to understand is that the distinction doesn’t matter.
I stare at him. “And my phone?”
Silence. Which is answer enough. It only confirms his reach. It only tells me he has no intention of reassuring me. It only tells me he would rather let me sit with the possibility than limit my understanding of what he can access.
A colder feeling moves through me then. Not panic. Something sharper. Violated recognition.
The cage is larger than I thought. Not just physical. Not just financial. Not just medical.
It’s total.