Page 92 of Sinful

“It’s Jesse.”

“Oh.” I tightened my grip on the steering wheel, wincing as another bolt of pain shot through my shoulder. “Sorry, I assumed it was him. He’s pissed because—”

“Because you practically broke out of the hospital fifteen minutes ago?”

I grinned. “He told you?”

“Yeah. I’ve been trying to call you for a few days now, and you weren’t answering, so I was getting worried,” he said. “I finally called him because I was starting to think you’d fuckingdied, and he told me you were in the hospital.Werebeing the operative word.”

“I had to get out of there. You know what it’s like.”

“Yes, as someone who works in a hospital, I do indeed know what it’s like.” He chuckled and went on. “Anyway, that’s actually why I’ve been trying to call. I still haven’t told you about all that weird shit in the archives, and I’ve found even more stuff now.”

I glanced at the clock. I still had at least fifteen minutes until I reached the vacation house. “Tell me now.”

“It’s all related to IVF data. The first thing I found was a bunch of files from the early nineties. A couple had eleven eggs retrieved, and five of them wound up being turned into fertilized embryos. But in the final copy of the file, it says the couple were only given four. One was viable in a pregnancy. The others failed.”

“So? IVF embryos fail all the time.”

“Yes, but there were supposed to be five, not four. That couple could’ve had a chance at another child, if the fifth embryo turned out to be viable as well.”

“Clerical error, I bet,” I said. “There were probably only four embryos, not five. Sometimes people make mistakes in data entry.”

“That’s exactly what I thought at first. Just a typo. But then I kept finding the exact same mistake in other files when I was reconciling all the documents. There’s fifty-two unaccounted-for embryos altogether, spanning from the mid-eighties to the early noughties. One or two typos I can understand. But fifty-two separate cases where the medical receptionist has input the wrong data? That seems really… off. And like I said, it went on for almost twenty years. Either the hospital hired a bunch of absolute idiots, or staff members were being given the wrong data after the retrievals and fertilizations were all done.”

“Wrong data, I would assume. But you’re right. It’s strange that it happened so many times.”

“I guess it doesn’t matter now. Like I said, it was years ago, and I haven’t found any record of similar mistakes after 2004. So I—”

“Wait, what did you say? What year?”

“2004.”

My heart began to race. Something was gnawing at the back of my mind, trying to break through to my conscious thoughts, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

“Sebastian?” Jesse said. “You still there?”

I remained silent, mind still whirling. 2004 was the same year my mother was murdered. But that was just a coincidence, surely.

No such thing as coincidence,I recalled Rose once telling me when we were languishing in the hot springs.The Entity doesn’t allow for that.

I shook the thought from my head. The Entity wasn’t fucking real, and coincidences happened all the time. Besides, a lot of shit went down in 2004. Not just my mother’s death.

Jesse piped up again. “Hey, man, you lost reception or something?”

“No, sorry, I heard you. I was just thinking.”

“Do you think I should email your dad about this stuff?” he asked. “I figured he’d want to know about any fuckups in his hospital, even if it’s all in the past, but I wanted to ask you first so I don’t end up wasting his time. I’m pretty sure he already thinks I’m a total idiot after I failed the bar and ran to him to beg for a job.”

I lifted one hand from the wheel to rub my tightly clenched jaw. “Don’t mention it to him yet. I’ll look into it myself.”

“All right.”

“I’m about to lose reception,” I said, spotting a familiar carved symbol on a tree. “Talk later, okay?”

Once I’d hung up, I gritted my teeth and accelerated. Images of Rose kept flashing in my head, weak and crying as hunger pains wracked her body. It brought an ache to my chest so intense I feared my rib cage was about to crack open.

The road ahead seemed endless, each second on it stretching into eternity, but I clung to the knowledge that every moment brought me closer to her. Closer to ending her suffering.

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