The clinic reopened its internal archives.
Old security logs were recovered.
A backup tape existed.
Nobody expected anything useful.
There was no video.
But there was something better.
Electronic badge records.
Incubator access.
Label printer history.
At 6:13 a.m. on the morning of our transfer, Simone’s badge entered the embryo laboratory.
At 6:18, two labels were reprinted.
Mine.
Hers.
At 6:24, she accessed our patient records.
At 6:31, she left.
Her shift did not begin until eight.
She eventually confessed.
Not immediately.
But eventually.
The confession came during a closed meeting with investigators.
I learned the details later.
Simone had noticed Darius during our early appointments.
He had spoken kindly to her once when she dropped a stack of forms.
That was all.
She became fixated.
Not on him exactly.
On what he represented.
Jonathan and Simone’s marriage had already been deteriorating.
They were pursuing IVF because Jonathan desperately wanted a child.
