“Why?” Mark cried out, shaking his head violently. “Why would she do that? Where did she go? To her parents? To her sister?”
“Her parents died in a car crash five years ago, Mr. Carter—a fact you would know if you had ever listened to her talk about her family instead of talking about yourself,” Dr. Patel snapped. “And her sister lives in London and hasn’t spoken to Emily since you isolated her two years into your marriage.”
Dr. Patel held up the paper, letting Mark read the destination address written in bold, typed black letters at the bottom of the page. It wasn't a residence. It wasn't a hospital. It was a corporate-owned storage facility on the industrial outskirts of the city, paired with a P.O. box downtown.
“She didn’t take the babies home, Mark,” Dr. Patel said, her voice dropping to a devastating whisper. “Because the babies never left the NICU. And Emily didn't leave the hospital to go home. She left to find out why her medical files had already been altered before she even woke up from anesthesia.”
Mark stared at the paper, the letters blurring together. “Altered? What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the fact that someone in this hospital—using an administrative override password belonging to the chief of staff—logged into our system at 2:14 p.m. on Friday, two minutes before Emily signed her consent form,” Dr. Patel said, her eyes locked onto his, unblinking. “Someone changed the birth registry of your triplets. They were registered not as live births, but as a medical disposal procedure due to severe fetal demise.”
Mark staggered backward, hitting the wall. “That’s... that’s impossible. They cried. I heard them crying in the background when Lauren called me later—no, wait. Emily heard them. The babies lived!”
“Two of them did,” Dr. Patel said quietly. “Grace and Lily survived. They are currently upstairs in Incubator Ward 3 under state protective custody. But Baby C—Hope—was recorded as a stillbirth. Except, Mr. Carter... Hope wasn't stillborn.”