Chapter 2
Grace
The waiting room of Dr. Saylor’s boutique fertility clinic always smelled faintly of sterile lemon and expensive orchids.
It was a serene, heavily soundproofed space on Park Avenue designed to coddle Manhattan’s elite through the messy, vulnerable, and often agonizing process of making a family.
The plush velvet chairs, the muted instrumental music piping through hidden speakers, the temperate air—it was all meticulously curated to project an unshakable sense of calm.
I was not calm.
I sat beside Adrian on a pale gray loveseat, my hands folded tightly in my lap.
I was wearing a structured pale blue sheath dress, my hair smoothed into a flawless chignon.
I looked exactly like the composed, effortlessly elegant wife of the CEO of Wright Capital.
But underneath the expensive fabric, my skin still felt hypersensitive from the night before, vibrating with a strange, residual tension that I couldn’t shake.
The image of Adrian shattering the crystal decanter kept replaying in my mind. The raw, violent panic in his eyes.
Adrian’s hand rested on my thigh, his thumb brushing slowly, rhythmically back and forth against the fabric. It was a gesture of ownership and comfort, one that usually anchored me when the anxiety of the clinical process threatened to pull me under.
Today, the weight of his hand felt different. It felt heavy. Rigid.
Across from us, Celine sat in an oversized armchair, flipping idly through a glossy architectural magazine.
She looked fresh and bright in a floral maternity sundress, her blonde hair tousled.
She looked unbothered by the clinical setting.
She hadn’t mentioned last night’s unexpected visit, and neither had we.
The unspoken rule of our arrangement was that we only dealt with the surface.
We were the grateful intended parents; she was the angelic vessel.
Any messy, uncomfortable human emotions were neatly swept under the rug.
“They’re taking a long time,” I murmured, leaning slightly toward Adrian, keeping my voice low.
Adrian shrugged. “It takes as long as it takes.”
His voice was steady, the rich, resonant baritone devoid of the jagged terror from the night before.
But as I looked closely at his profile, I saw the microscopic tightening of his jaw.
The cords in his neck were strained. Adrian was a man who hated waiting.
He hated any process he couldn’t personally expedite with a phone call or a blank check.
But this was different than his usual corporate impatience.
He wasn’t radiating annoyance; he was radiating dread.
“I’m sure everything is fine,” Celine offered brightly, looking up from her magazine. She offered me a warm, reassuring smile, her blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “He kicks like crazy, especially when I drink cold water. He’s so strong.”
I smiled back, forcing the corners of my mouth up, though the mention of the baby’s strength sent a phantom twinge through my own empty, scarred uterus. “I know. It’s just...until Dr. Saylor actually sits down and says the words, it’s hard to exhale.”
Celine nodded sympathetically and went back to her magazine.
Before the silence could stretch into anything uncomfortable, the heavy oak door to the inner offices clicked open. A nurse in crisp scrubs smiled at us, her voice a hushed, professional purr. “Mr. and Mrs. Wright? Miss Dubois? Dr. Saylor is ready for you in consultation room B.”
We stood simultaneously. Adrian’s hand slid seamlessly from my thigh to the small of my back, guiding me forward. It was a fiercely protective gesture, automatic. Celine fell into step beside us, her designer purse slung effortlessly over her shoulder as we walked down the carpeted hallway.
Consultation room B was less of a medical exam room and more of a private executive office.
Dr. Arthur Saylor sat behind a massive mahogany desk, a thick manila folder open in front of him.
He was a man in his late fifties with silver hair, an impeccably tailored suit, and kind, tired eyes that had seen hundreds of couples break apart or come together over the singular desire for a child.
Next to him sat a younger woman in a white coat, holding an iPad. She was the clinic’s senior genetic counselor.
“Grace. Adrian. Celine,” Dr. Saylor greeted us, gesturing to the three leather chairs positioned in a neat semi-circle in front of his desk. “Please, sit.”
We sat. I took the middle chair, flanked by Adrian on my right and Celine on my left.
I leaned forward, my pulse suddenly hammering in my throat, drowning out the residual anxiety from the night before.
This was it. The results of the amniocentesis.
The procedure had come later than standard—a shadow on the twenty-week anatomy scan that Dr. Saylor had wanted definitively ruled out—and the two-week wait for the full panel had been its own quiet torture.
The final, definitive map of our baby’s health.
If this was clear, we were in the home stretch.
“I’ll start with the most important news,” Dr. Saylor said.
He closed the manila folder and folded his hands on top of it. He smiled, a genuine, warm expression that instantly released a fraction of the tension in my chest.
“The chromosomal microarray is normal,” Dr. Saylor announced, his voice steady and reassuring. “The baby is healthy. There are no markers for Down syndrome, trisomy 18, or trisomy 13. The neural tube is closed. Heart, lungs, and brain are developing exactly on schedule.”
A massive, shuddering breath tore out of my lungs. I closed my eyes, sagging back against the leather chair as the adrenaline washed out of my system, leaving me lightheaded with relief. “Thank God.”
Adrian’s hand gripped mine on the armrest. His fingers curled around mine tight enough to ache, but he didn’t exhale.
“And the rest of the extended genetic screen?” Adrian asked. His voice was clipped, sharp, and all business.
I opened my eyes, looking at Dr. Saylor.
For a fraction of a second—so fast I almost missed it—Dr. Saylor’s warm, professional smile faltered. His eyes flicked away from Adrian, dropping to the closed folder on his desk. A muscle feathered in the doctor’s jaw. He looked, suddenly and inexplicably, terrified.
“Also excellent,” the genetic counselor chimed in, oblivious to the sudden, heavy shift in the doctor beside her.
She glanced down at her iPad, scrolling with a manicured finger.
“However, the panel did pick up one benign finding. We run an extremely comprehensive metabolic screen as a matter of course for our VIP clients, and we found a marker for something called pseudocholinesterase deficiency.”
I frowned, leaning forward again. “Pseudo-what?”
“Pseudocholinesterase deficiency,” the counselor repeated patiently.
“It’s a mouthful, I know. It’s an inherited enzyme abnormality.
It sounds scary, but I assure you, it is benign in day-to-day life.
It just means the baby’s body will metabolize certain types of muscle relaxants—specifically succinylcholine, which is used in general anesthesia—much slower than normal. ”
“So, what does that mean practically?” Adrian demanded. He leaned forward, his broad shoulders tensing. His protective instinct was flaring, sharp and aggressive, filling the room.
“Practically, it means nothing until the baby needs surgery, like having the tonsils out or the appendix removed,” the counselor explained smoothly.
“And even then, it’s not a medical crisis.
We just add a permanent note to the medical file so that any future anesthesiologist knows to use different paralytic agents during the procedure.
That’s it. It will not affect the baby’s quality of life, development, or health in any way. ”
“Okay,” I breathed, processing the information, filing it away. “Okay. A note in his file. We can handle that. That’s fine.”
“Exactly,” the counselor said with a bright, professional smile, clearly pleased that I wasn’t panicking over the minor anomaly. “Now, because pseudocholinesterase deficiency is a recessive trait, we like to update the parents’ medical files as well, just for our records.”
Dr. Saylor shifted in his chair. It was a sharp, jagged movement. He reached out and grabbed the edge of his mahogany desk, his knuckles turning white.
“It’s a rare gene,” the counselor continued, tapping the screen of her iPad to pull up a new document. “So, an affected child must inherit the mutated gene from both biological parents.”
She didn’t notice Dr. Saylor staring at her, his eyes wide with a sudden, suffocating panic. She was just doing her job, following the clinic’s rigorous protocols.
“I’m just going to look at your initial intake screenings from last year, Mr. and Mrs. Wright, to update the flags,” she said cheerfully. “Our system syncs straight from the lab’s portal, so everything is always current.”
The room was quiet. The hum of the air conditioning seemed abnormally loud, a steady, mechanical drone that filled the silence.
“Let’s see,” the counselor murmured, her finger scrolling down the screen. “Mr. Wright, yes, you are a carrier for the BCHE mutation. That’s noted here.” She scrolled a bit further. “And Mrs. Wright...wait.”
She stopped scrolling.
A small furrow appeared between her groomed brows. She tapped the screen again, dragging her finger back up, then down again.
“What is it?” I asked, my voice calm. But underneath the calm, a sudden, strange prickle of ice began to spread across the back of my neck.
The counselor looked up, glancing at Dr. Saylor with a hesitant, confused expression. “Dr. Saylor, Mrs. Wright’s intake panel doesn’t show the carrier status for the BCHE gene.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, leaning forward to try and see the screen, though the iPad was angled away from me. “Did the initial test miss it? Should I give another blood sample?”
“Our panels are comprehensive, Mrs. Wright,” the counselor said slowly. She looked at me, her professional smile gone, replaced by a deep, clinical confusion. “They don’t miss markers like this. Your test was negative.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Mrs. Wright, you’re not a carrier for pseudocholinesterase deficiency. You do not have the gene.”
I stared at her.
My brain, trained for years in professional kitchens measure ingredients to the exact gram, to follow precise, unbending chemical reactions and ratios, immediately began working the genetic equation she had just laid out.
An affected child must inherit the mutated gene from both biological parents.
Adrian is a carrier.
I am not a carrier.
“I don’t understand,” I said again, my voice suddenly sounding very small and very far away in the quiet, sterile room. “You just said...you said the baby has it. And he has to get it from both parents.”
“Yes,” the counselor said, her voice dropping to a nervous, thin whisper.
“But I don’t have it.”
“No. You don’t.”
I looked at Dr. Saylor.
His face had gone horrifyingly pale. The silver-haired patriarch of fertility miracles looked like he was about to pass out. But he wasn’t staring at the iPad. He wasn’t looking at me, or the counselor.
He was staring directly at Adrian.
“Dr. Saylor,” I said, my voice rising. The ice on the back of my neck turned into a freezing, paralyzing flood that rushed straight into my veins. “If I don’t have the gene, how can the baby have the trait?”
Dr. Saylor opened his mouth, but no sound came out. The silence stretched, thin and brittle, pulled so tight I thought the air in the room was going to shatter.
I turned to Adrian. My husband. The man who managed every variable, who controlled every outcome, who always had the answer before the question was even asked.
Adrian was still.
His dark eyes were fixed straight ahead on the mahogany desk. He wasn’t looking at the doctor. He wasn’t looking at me. His face was a mask carved from absolute stone, his jaw locked so tight a muscle ticked rapidly beneath his skin. He didn’t look confused. He didn’t look angry.
He looked like a man watching a bomb go off that he had planted himself.
“Adrian?” I whispered, my heart slamming against my ribs like a trapped bird.
“There must be a mistake,” the counselor blurted out, her hands shaking slightly as she gripped the edges of the iPad, desperate to fill the suffocating silence. “A mix-up at the lab. A false negative on Mrs. Wright’s original test. Or...oh, my god.”
Her eyes widened in sudden, stark horror as another possibility occurred to her. A catastrophic, career-ending possibility. She looked at Dr. Saylor, her voice trembling so badly it cracked.
“Dr. Saylor, the implantation protocol...did the lab mix up the embryos? Did they implant the wrong embryo?”
A mix-up.
The words hit me like a physical blow to the stomach.
The wrong embryo.
A stranger’s child growing in Celine’s body.
The baby I had loved, the baby I had wept over in those ultrasound photos last night, the baby whose nursery was currently filled with swatches of sage green paint—it wasn’t mine.
It was a catastrophic medical error. My baby—my actual biological child—was gone, lost in some sterile freezer or, God forbid, implanted in another woman.
“No,” I gasped, clapping a hand over my mouth as the horror fully bloomed in my chest. “No, Dr. Saylor, please tell me they didn’t mix up the embryos. Please tell me that’s our baby.”
Dr. Saylor looked like he was going to be sick. He didn’t answer me. He just kept staring at Adrian, his silent, desperate plea hanging in the air.
“Adrian, say something!” I cried, grabbing his arm. The expensive wool of his suit felt rough under my shaking fingers. “Tell them to fix it! Tell them to check the lab records!”
Adrian slowly turned his head to look at me. The fathomless wreckage in his dark eyes was terrifying. He opened his mouth, his throat working as he tried to pull oxygen into his lungs.
“Grace,” he said, his voice a broken, hollow rasp.
“There’s no need to check the clinic records,” a quiet, breathy voice said from my left.
I whipped my head around.
Celine was sitting still in her leather chair. Her hands were resting gently, protectively, on the swell of her stomach. She looked remarkably calm, almost serene, a stark, jarring contrast to the absolute panic suffocating the rest of the room.
“Celine, what are you talking about?” I asked, my voice trembling so badly I could barely form the words. “They might have implanted the wrong embryo. We have to find out whose baby this is.”
Celine looked at me. Her big blue eyes were swimming with sudden, luminous tears, a perfect picture of tragic sympathy. But her voice, when she spoke, didn’t shake at all.
“There was no mix-up at the lab, Grace,” Celine said softly.
She reached out across the small space between the chairs. She bypassed me, placing her small, manicured hand directly over Adrian’s rigid forearm.
“I’m the mother.”