Chapter 2 - The File That Had Been Rewritten
No one spoke for three full seconds.
Then Adrian released my hand and stood.
Not abruptly. Not dramatically. That would have been easier.
He stood with the terrifying calm of a man deciding who had betrayed him.
Dr. Sloan saw it too.
“Sit down,” she ordered.
He looked at her.
“I mean it. If your first instinct is to call armed men, leave my clinic.”
Marco was outside the room, but I knew one message from Adrian could bring half the South Side running.
“I’m not calling anyone,” Adrian said.
“Good.”
He sat.
I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. Chicago feared Adrian Moretti, but Dr. Rebecca Sloan had just put him in a chair like a misbehaving teenager.
I turned to her. “How can medical records be altered?”
“They shouldn’t be. Your transferred records showed routine bloodwork from a lab in Milwaukee, including genetic screening and Rh status. But the values I’m seeing today conflict with them.”
“I was never in Milwaukee.”
Dr. Sloan froze.
Adrian’s head turned toward me.
“What?”
“I said I was never in Milwaukee.”
She opened the electronic chart and scrolled quickly. “Your file says blood drawn at North Harbor Women’s Diagnostics, six months ago.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
My heartbeat became louder than the monitor.
“Could it be a clerical mix-up?” I asked.
“Possible,” she said, though her face said unlikely. “But there’s more. Your original records list your emergency contact as a woman named Celeste Rowan.”
I stared at her.
Adrian stared too.
“Who is that?” Dr. Sloan asked.
“My ex-husband’s aunt,” I said.
Adrian’s expression emptied.
“Aunt Celeste died four years ago.”
The room chilled.
Dr. Sloan turned the monitor toward us. “Then someone deliberately built a false prenatal history under your name.”
I felt suddenly nauseated.
“Why?”
“That is not a medical question,” she said. “Right now my concern is the baby. We need a maternal-fetal medicine specialist tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not due for six weeks.”
“You may not have six weeks.”
Adrian’s face went white.
I looked at him and, irrationally, wanted to comfort him.
Then I remembered I was the one lying on the table.
“What exactly are you worried about?”
“Placental insufficiency. Possibly fetal anemia. Possibly an abnormal antibody reaction. We need Doppler studies, repeat bloodwork, and continuous monitoring.”
“Can she die?” Adrian asked.
His voice broke on the last word.
Dr. Sloan did not soften the truth. “If we ignore this, yes. If we move quickly, we have options.”
I closed my eyes.
Our daughter kicked again.
Tiny, furious, alive.
I whispered, “Okay.”
Dr. Sloan squeezed my wrist. “Good. We’re transferring you to St. Catherine’s.”
Adrian rose again. “That hospital is not secure.”
I glared at him.
He corrected himself immediately. “I mean… may I arrange additional security?”
Dr. Sloan pointed at me. “Her decision.”
I almost said no out of habit.
Then I remembered the fake records.
“Discreet security,” I said. “No uniforms. No guns visible. Nobody enters without my permission.”
Adrian nodded once.
He texted Marco.
The ambulance ride took eighteen minutes.
Adrian followed in a black SUV but did not force his way inside. That restraint unsettled me more than his usual control.
At St. Catherine’s, specialists swarmed me with tests.
The fetal heart monitor wrapped around my belly. Blood filled vial after vial. A sonographer spent nearly forty minutes measuring arteries while a physician named Dr. Patel watched in grim silence.
Finally, he pulled a stool closer.
“The baby has moderate anemia.”
My mouth went dry.
“From what?”
“We’re testing for causes. One possibility is maternal antibodies attacking fetal red blood cells.”
“But why would that happen?”
“It can happen when mother and fetus have incompatible blood factors, though your situation is unusual.”
Adrian sat beside the bed, elbows on his knees.
“Unusual how?”
Dr. Patel looked at him. “The blood type recorded in her earlier prenatal file is A positive.”
I blinked. “That’s wrong.”
“What is your blood type?”
“O negative.”
Silence.
Adrian and I looked at each other.
We had the same blood type.
Dr. Patel frowned. “That raises additional questions.”
He left to speak with the lab.
Adrian stood at the window overlooking Chicago.
“You hid from me,” he said quietly.
I stared at the monitor.
“I did.”
“And someone still found you.”
My throat tightened.
“That’s what you’re thinking?”
“Yes.”
He turned around.
“That fake clinic in Milwaukee used my dead aunt’s name. That means whoever created those records knew my family. Not publicly. Personally.”
“You have a thousand enemies.”
“None of them knew Aunt Celeste handled medical emergencies for the family before she died.”
I looked at him.
“Who did?”
“Very few people.”
His phone vibrated.
He checked it.
Everything about him changed.
“What?” I asked.
“Marco found the clinic.”
“The fake one?”
“It exists.”
I sat up too quickly.
“Where?”
“Milwaukee.”
“You said that already.”
“No.” Adrian’s voice went flat. “I mean the clinic physically exists. Private diagnostics office. Opened seven months ago. Closed last week.”
“Who owned it?”
He hesitated.
“Adrian.”
“A holding company.”
“Whose?”
He looked at me.
“Mine.”
For a moment, I could not understand the words.
“What?”
“A Moretti holding company is listed as the property owner.”
I stared at him.
The room seemed to narrow.
“You expect me to believe you didn’t know?”
“I didn’t.”
“You own hundreds of properties.”
“Yes.”
“So someone used your company, your dead aunt’s name, and my identity to create fake medical records?”
“That appears to be what happened.”
“And you had nothing to do with it?”
His jaw tightened. “No.”
I laughed once, without humor.
“This is exactly why I left.”
“You didn’t leave. I divorced you.”
“Because you said I was safer away from you.”
“I thought I was protecting you.”
“You always think that.”
His face hardened. “And right now someone has been tracking your pregnancy through a clinic tied to my organization.”
A nurse entered before I could answer.
“Ms. Hart, we have preliminary blood results.”
Dr. Patel followed behind her.
He looked more concerned than before.
“What now?” I asked.
“Your blood contains a rare antibody.”
“Can you treat it?”
“Yes. But the source is the issue.”
Adrian stood.
Dr. Patel continued. “This antibody usually develops after exposure to incompatible blood through pregnancy or transfusion.”
“I’ve never had a transfusion.”
“That’s what your current medical history says.”
I felt cold.
“What are you implying?”
He placed a printed result on the tray.
“I’m saying your body shows evidence that, at some point, you were exposed to blood that does not match your own.”
Adrian looked at me.
I looked back.
Then a memory hit me.
Three years earlier.
A car accident outside Lake Geneva.
A hospital room.
Adrian telling me I had lost a lot of blood but was fine.
I had barely remembered the night.
I whispered, “There was an accident.”
Adrian’s eyes sharpened.
“The one after Celeste’s funeral.”
“Yes.”
“You did receive blood,” he said.
I stared at him.
“No. You told me I didn’t.”
His face went blank.
“I told you what the doctor told me.”
“Which doctor?”
He did not answer.
Because we both remembered.
Dr. Nicholas Varen.
May you like
The Moretti family physician.
The man who had disappeared two weeks before our divorce.
