She Was at Risk

by P. D. Workman

  “It’s preliminary,” Zachary cautioned. “I don’t have any kind of proof yet. I’m making inquiries; I need to do some interviews, try to find out what I can. Get enough evidence to start a police investigation.”

  “I’m not sure we want to go to the police.”

  Zachary hesitated, thinking about that. Someone in the public eye like Gordon would not necessarily want to be known as someone who had been cuckolded by medical technology. Even though there was clearly nothing he could have done to prevent someone from substituting his DNA for Gordon’s in the lab, there might still be a stigma attached to not being the father of Bridget’s twins.

  And what about Bridget? She was all about appearances and reputation. It was very important for her to be seen as someone who was together and as close to perfect as a mortal could be. It had not been an easy decision for her to sacrifice her perfect figure for a pregnancy. Now she was in the position of having to decide whether to terminate that pregnancy. If her friends and worshipers found out that she had been pregnant by someone other than Gordon, that she was at the center of some fertility clinic scandal, what would that do to her?

  So what was the goal?

  “How far do you want me to go, then?” Zachary asked, feeling his way through the conversation. “If you do not want this guy prosecuted because of the possible fallout for you and Bridget, what is your preferred outcome?”

  “I want to know who did this,” Gordon said firmly. He cleared his throat, and there was a period of silence as he considered. “I realize that you will not be in a position to be able to prove that this man you are investigating was the culprit, but I want to get as close as possible. And then I want to make sure that he can never do something like this again. I want him fired and blackballed from the industry. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure that happens.”

  Zachary wasn’t sure what exactly that would involve, but he was confident that Gordon could do it. He was a powerful man with plenty of resources. He could talk to prominent doctors and lawyers and somehow find a way to prevent McLachlan from ever getting a job where he had access to genetic materials and embryos again. If Gordon put out the word, Zachary was sure he could make it happen.

  “Okay. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to talk to McLachlan’s ex-wife and previous coworkers in Minnesota. I’m going to find out what I can about what happened at his previous clinic and if there was anything going on at the hospital before that. And I’ll do what I can to find out whether he has any Huntington’s Disease in his family. I’ve already got a researcher working on it.”

  “McLachlan?” Gordon repeated. “Is that his name?”

  “Er, yes.” Zachary realized he shouldn’t have let that detail slip out. He should have kept his mouth shut until he knew more. “But so far, there is no proof that he’s done anything illegal or unethical. He’s just the best candidate at the moment. If I find out that he was involved in something similar previously, and if he has Huntington’s in his family, then I think that’s as close as we can come to establishing his guilt, short of a DNA test.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” Gordon agreed. “And if you find there isn’t anything there…”

  “Then we look elsewhere. He’s not the only one on our list. There are several others to look at.”

  “How long will this take?”

  “I’m not sure. A couple of days to do interviews. Everyone I need to see won’t be available the same day. Travel time. Maybe wait for some courthouse searches to come in.”

  Zachary couldn’t see that it mattered how long it took. His investigation would not intersect with Bridget’s decision to terminate the pregnancy. She would make that decision without knowing who the sperm donor was. He didn’t know if she even understood that the positive Huntington’s Disease meant that Gordon was not the father of the babies. Or alternatively, that she was not the mother.

  “Will you let me know?” Gordon asked. “As soon as you can. I want to know if this guy is the one.”

  Zachary shifted uncomfortably. Gordon had every right to have animosity toward whoever had perpetrated the fraud, but Zachary had not expected the undercurrent of fury in Gordon’s tone.

  “Of course,” he agreed. “I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything.”

  22

  As much as Zachary liked highway driving, he could not drive from Vermont to Minnesota for the investigation. Especially not with Gordon pressing for answers as soon as possible. Gordon had quickly approved his purchase of plane tickets the next day so that Zachary could get right to it.

  Zachary picked up his emails from Heather and assembled what information he had on McLachlan’s ex-wife, coworkers, and family in Minnesota and started making phone calls. He was as vague as he could be about his purposes for talking to them, trying to make it sound like a routine credit check or something of that nature. Of course, people knew that credit checks didn’t involve face-to-face conversations with the lender, but Zachary did his best to make it sound dull and routine, nothing to get alarmed about. He cautioned them against calling McLachlan, making it sound like he wouldn’t get whatever financing he was looking for if they contacted him directly.

  They waffled and asked questions but, eventually, he managed to get several interviews lined up so he’d be able to get to work as soon as his wheels hit the ground. Others he would drop in on and hope that he could get a few minutes to talk to them.

  He had hoped to begin with Forest McLachlan’s ex-wife, but she had been harder to pin down than some of his former coworkers, so he would have to catch her later in the day. The fertility clinic McLachlan had worked at before Westlake had new management, and most of the old staff had been turned over, but Heather had managed to track people down at home or their new places of employment. The first person Zachary had an appointment with was Dr. Shane Patton. They met at a coffee shop a block away from Dr. Patton’s new job, a large lab that did various kinds of testing that Zachary had never heard of before and would probably never need. He was a young man, his round cheeks giving him a baby-face that probably charmed the girls but also made people doubt whether he could be a real doctor.

  “So, what exactly do you do?” Zachary asked him as they sat down with their cups of coffee.

  “I do lab tests. There aren’t as many openings for physicians as you might think. Yes, people are always complaining that there aren’t enough doctors to go around, but there aren’t many openings, either. Someone has to pay the doctors. We can’t work for free.”

  Zachary nodded. Dr. Patton was, he thought, starting on the offensive, tired of people asking how good a doctor he could be when he was so young and didn’t work at a doctor’s office.

  “And what do you do?” Dr. Patton returned. “I wasn’t actually sure when I got off of the phone what it is that you were after. Something about Forest McLachlan, but I couldn’t figure out what.”

  “To tell the truth, I’m a private investigator. I didn’t want to say too much on the phone because this is a very confidential matter.”

  “A private investigator. For Forest?”

  “No, for someone that Forest crossed paths with. I’m looking into the possibility that he was involved in an… unethical transaction.” Zachary couched his explanation in more vague terms. Dr. Patton might think that it was a pyramid scheme, porn, gambling, or whatever he liked. He didn’t need to know that it was something directly related to the work that the two of them had done at the fertility clinic.

  “Unethical?” Dr. Patton said it in a hesitant tone. Like he might have misunderstood. He didn’t say “Forest?” in a shocked tone, as if he would never believe that McLachlan had been involved in something shady. He was concerned with the word unethical and what it might involve.

  “Yes. And I’m just talking to you for background. You used to work with him, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, sure. We worked together at Sandhills Clinic. That was a couple of years back. I don’t know what it could have
to do with anything that’s going on now.”

  “No, I didn’t say that it did. But I need to look into Mr. McLachlan’s background to satisfy all of the parties involved. It won’t take long. A few questions and I’ll be done here.”

  “Dr. McLachlan.”

  “Oh, sorry. Dr. McLachlan.” Zachary noted with interest that Patton had corrected him. Then, as far as Patton was concerned, McLachlan was still a doctor in good standing.

  “So.” Zachary pulled out his notepad and flipped to a new page. “What can you tell me about him?”

  “Well, I don’t know what you’re looking for. Nice enough guy. Got along with people. Decent at his job.”

  Pretty uninspiring compliments.

  “Were the two of you friends?”

  “Friends… no. We were friendly. We talked, you know, exchanged small talk over the coffee. Talked about sports the night before or coming up. Asked after each other’s families.” He shrugged. “Just… passing acquaintances, really. We wouldn’t have been friends if we hadn’t worked together. Never would have run into each other anywhere else.”

  “And he got along with the other doctors and staff that he worked with.”

  “Sure. Yeah.”

  “No conflicts there? No one who didn’t like him? He didn’t make any waves?”

  “Conflicts?” Again, Patton repeated Zachary’s inquiry and shook his head. “Who would he have conflicts with? I guess it’s a high-stress environment in some ways. You have to follow exacting procedures; make sure you do everything right. Don’t drop Mrs. Watson’s petri dish.” He gave a short laugh, inviting Zachary to share the joke with him. “But it wasn’t like we were competitors, or fighting over anything. No one knew anyone socially. We just worked together.”

  “And he was good at what he did? He wasn’t the one who dropped Mrs. Watson’s petri dish?”

  “That was just a joke. There was no Mrs. Watson. It’s just a thing. You’re dealing with… a very precious commodity. Arguably the most valuable thing in the world to our patients. And it’s a very fragile one. You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, but when you’re working in fertility treatments, you have to be very, very careful not to make any mistakes.”

  “I would imagine so. Did Mr. McLachlan have a specialty?”

  “Dr. McLachlan.”

  “Right.”

  “No… none of us specialized. I mean, the younger doctors, we were just there to do the lab work, not to interface with the patients. That was for the gray hairs. They give people a sense of… wisdom and competence. Never mind that not one of them could probably do ICSI themselves. They had the social skills it took to deal with fussy, rich old ladies.”

  Ouch. Zachary had to school his expression not to give himself away. Dr. Patton was young, but he wasn’t that much younger than most of the women who came into the clinic would be. But he made them sound ancient and batty.

  “It sounds like you found it a frustrating place to work. You felt like… you were being held back?”

  “Yeah. That’s exactly it. We could have done so much more than we were doing if they’d just let us. But they only wanted us dealing with the technical stuff, and not to have a personal relationship with the patients. Which really means they didn’t want to pay us for the patient-interface work. Keep us doing routine stuff in the lab while they were making the big bucks for consultation.”

  “Was there a big rift between the older doctors and the younger ones, then? Was it a two-class system? Or were there… a range of skills, and you just felt like yours weren’t being utilized?”

  “A lot of us younger guys felt like that. You go to school for a billion years, and then you think you’re going to make a ton of money and live like a king. And then you find out… you have all of these debts to pay off, and you’re basically earning minimum wage. I mean, there is hardly enough left over to eat. And you have to work for another ten years to advance and feel like you’re getting anywhere, moving up the ladder. It’s a tough economy out there. They don’t pay you any more than they have to.”

  “Yeah. That must be really difficult.”

  “It is.” Patton nodded eagerly, glad Zachary understood. “It’s really hard to get ahead.”

  “And how was Dr. McLachlan handling that? Was he doing any better at advancement than you were?”

  “He was trying. You gotta give the guy points for effort. He made coffee for the partners, chatted them up, asked them about their golf scores. Offered to help with procedures. Made a nuisance of himself, but in a good way. Trying to get anyone to take a chance on him.”

  “And you thought he was just being fake?”

  “No. He wasn’t fake. Who can blame him for trying to do the same thing as the rest of us? Why shouldn’t he?”

  “Anything about him ever hit you the wrong way? Like you thought… there was something wrong, or he was doing something he shouldn’t?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Patton cocked his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Zachary figured he had elicited all of the up-front information that he was going to get. Bland, inoffensive stuff about McLachlan. It was time to turn the screws and see how Patton reacted.

  “There was some trouble when the two of you were at Sandhills Clinic?”

  Patton looked away, his eyes hooded. He sipped his coffee, looking like he wasn’t surprised by what Zachary had said. He had been hoping, up until then, that it was just an innocent interview. McLachlan needed a mortgage or other kind of loan. A work reference, maybe.

  “Trouble? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You really think that I would believe that? Of course you know what I’m talking about. There was a big to-do.”

  “Nah. Maybe there was a write-up or two in the paper on a slow news day. But it didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t the big deal that you think it was from reading what the shock-jocks had to write.”

  “So what was it, then?”

  “Just… some procedural stuff. Some women with sour grapes. What you do in a place like that is very emotional. People get overwrought. When things don’t work out the way they think they should, they get upset and look for someone to blame. They lay frivolous charges. It’s nothing new. Been happening in America for years. You don’t like your life? Sue someone. It’s not your fault. You don’t take responsibility for it.”

  “What were they suing for?”

  Patton studied Zachary. “You know what it was all about. Don’t bother trying to snow me. But there was nothing there. And they proved it in the end. There weren’t any sanctions. No one got fired. And those women eventually faded into the woodwork. There wasn’t any cash prize for suing the clinic. No free money.”

  “There were claims that mistakes were made. Samples mixed up. Implantations done when there wasn’t anything to implant. Sleight of hand.”

  “And how would they know that?” Patton shook his head in disbelief. “How would any woman know whether we implanted an embryo or just squirted a syringe of growth medium? It isn’t like we’re transplanting fetuses that have been raised in chambers. It isn’t anything you can see. And even if you do everything right, chances are, it still isn’t going to take. You implant viable embryos, but for one reason or another, they just don’t develop. What’s miraculous is that they ever do. That we have this technology where we can make a baby outside the womb, and then put it back in, and it works. Do you know that science like that a hundred years ago would have been considered to be witchcraft? People don’t stop and think about what it is that we’re really doing.”

  “It is pretty amazing,” Zachary encouraged.

  “Women put off having babies until they’re forty. They think that because they froze their eggs when they were twenty, that it’s just a matter of squirting some sperm over it, and they’re going to have a baby. The eggs were frozen, so they’re still in perfect condition, right?” Patton shook his head. “No way, Jose. They don’t last tha
t long, even in the freezer. You wait ten years, and you’re out of luck. They’re not going to work. You ever seen freezer-burned meat? You know stuff still gets older and degrades even in a deep freeze.”

  “I never thought about it. You do hear about women who are just looking at getting pregnant at forty after their careers are firmly established.”

  “Yeah. And somehow the fact that their eggs have degraded over ten or twenty years is our fault. There must be incompetent people in your lab because my IVF didn’t work the first time.”

  Zachary nodded sympathetically. “And… when it worked? What was this business about mixed-up samples? Do you think that ever happened?”

  There hadn’t been anything in the newspaper reports about mixed-up samples. That was Zachary’s own fiction.

  Patton looked at him, trying to decide what to say. He tapped a nail on the table, took a sip of his coffee, fidgeted with his earlobe. “Like I said, these rich old ladies… if anything doesn’t go the way they expected, they start throwing around accusations. Do you know how much higher the risks of genetic damage are when you do IVF? People think that because we have this great technology, we can do miracles. Women want the embryos checked for specific problems. We want a baby without BRCA1. We don’t want to take the chance that she will have a higher risk of breast cancer. So they want DNA tests done when the embryo has only gone through a few divisions. And we can do it, but there is a risk. Every time you touch that embryo, you could be doing damage. Fertilize it outside the womb, more risk. Do DNA testing to pick the embryo you want, more risk. Then people have a child who is blind or has cerebral palsy, and we’re the bad guys. It’s our fault. That doesn’t run in my family, so how could I have a baby with that?”

  “Does that happen?”

  “IVF babies have a higher risk of being low birth weight or premature. They have a higher rate of cancer, blindness, cerebral palsy, autism, genitourinary malformations, heart malformations. You name it. There’s a huge risk to having babies using technology like this.”