Chapter 27 - The Envelope
That evening, the three of us went home.
Lily disappeared upstairs with homework.
Sophie changed into sweatpants.
I started dinner.
Ordinary life.
Exactly the thing Sophie had once said she wasn't sure she could trust me with.
I loved it.
The doorbell rang.
A courier stood outside.
“Ethan Parker?”
“Yes.”
He handed me a thick envelope.
No return address.
“Sign here.”
I signed.
Sophie walked into the room.
“What is it?”
“I don't know.”
The envelope was old.
Not dirty.
But yellowed around the edges.
My name was typed on the front.
COLONEL ETHAN PARKER.
Inside was a smaller sealed packet.
And a letter.
The letterhead came from St. Vincent Medical Center.
My stomach tightened.
Sophie saw it.
“What?”
I unfolded the page.
The date was five years earlier.
Two weeks before I found Sophie in the hallway.
I read the first lines.
Then stopped.
“What does it say?”
I looked at her.
“This was supposed to be mailed to me five years ago.”
“From who?”
“Pathology.”
Her face changed.
I continued reading.
The letter referenced tissue from Sophie's second pregnancy.
The same pregnancy later connected to her disease.
There had been an internal review.
A lab irregularity.
A specimen identification concern.
Sophie took the page from me.
Her eyes moved quickly.
“What does this mean?”
“I don't know.”
My pulse accelerated.
At the bottom was a handwritten note.
Please contact Dr. Samuel Grant regarding discrepancy in Parker specimen 17B.
Sophie went pale.
“Samuel Grant.”
“You know him?”
“He was the pathologist after our second miscarriage.”
I stared at her.
The phone number on the page was disconnected.
The packet beneath the letter remained sealed.
Sophie reached for it.
I stopped her.
“What?”
“There could be medical records.”
“They're mine.”
She was right.
I handed it over.
She opened the seal.
Inside were copies of laboratory reports.
One page had a red stamp.
SPECIMEN MISMATCH - INTERNAL INVESTIGATION REQUIRED.
Sophie sat down.
I read over her shoulder.
Two patient numbers.
Two names partially redacted.
Two tissue samples apparently entered under the wrong identifiers for several hours before correction.
My chest tightened.
“What are you thinking?”
Sophie looked at me.
“I don't know.”
But I knew her face.
She was thinking exactly what I was.
Had the warning signs been there years earlier?
Had someone known?
Had the disease that nearly killed her been detectable after our second loss?
And if so, why had nobody told us?
Five years earlier, I would have reacted with anger first.
I would have demanded names.
Called lawyers.
Found somebody to blame.
This time, I sat beside my wife.
I took her hand.
“What do you want to do?”
Sophie stared at the old report.
Then she looked toward the stairs where Lily was humming to herself.
“I want the truth.”
I nodded.
May you like
“Then we'll find it.”
Together.
