Chapter 2 - THE REPORT SIMON BURIED
I read Simon’s medical report three times before I understood what it meant.
Not because the language was difficult.
Because my mind refused to accept the possibility that six years of my life had been built around a lie.
SEVERE MALE-FACTOR INFERTILITY.
The words sat in the center of the page with the cold certainty of a gravestone.
Below them were numbers I had learned to understand during years of fertility treatments. Motility. Morphology. Concentration. Recommendations for ICSI. Additional genetic screening. A note stating that natural conception would be considered highly unlikely without medical intervention.
The date on the report stopped me.
Five years and eleven months earlier.
Three weeks before Simon and I had started our first full round of fertility treatment.
I looked up at Gideon.
“He knew.”
Gideon didn’t soften the answer.
“Yes.”
I dropped the paper onto the kitchen table.
A strange sound came out of me.
Not crying.
Not quite laughter.
Something between the two.
“He knew before the injections.”
“Yes.”
“Before the surgery.”
“Yes.”
“Before his mother told me that maybe God was punishing me.”
Gideon’s jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
I pressed both hands against the edge of the table.
Suddenly I could remember every appointment.
Every fluorescent waiting room.
Every paper gown.
Every time Simon had sat beside me looking solemn while a doctor discussed what my body might be doing wrong.
I remembered one particular night after our third failed treatment.
I had been on the bathroom floor.
Simon had found me crying.
He had crouched beside me and taken my face between his hands.
“This isn’t your fault,” he had whispered.
I had thought those words were love.
Now they sounded like confession.
“How did you get this?”
Gideon remained standing on the opposite side of the kitchen.
His old dog, Boone, slept near the wood stove, completely unaware that the floor beneath my entire past had disappeared.
“I told you the clinic administrator was connected to an investigation.”
“What investigation?”
“Insurance fraud. Medical billing manipulation. Destruction of records. Possible falsification of patient consent forms.”
I stared at him.
“The fertility clinic?”
“Not the entire clinic. At least, that was never proven. One administrator and two outside consultants were involved in enough suspicious transactions that the sheriff’s department opened a preliminary investigation.”
“You were the sheriff.”
“I was.”
“What does Simon have to do with it?”
Gideon pulled out the chair across from me but didn’t sit until I nodded.
“The administrator’s name was Warren Pike. About seven years ago, we started seeing his name connected to businesses that had nothing to do with fertility medicine. Consulting companies. Medical equipment vendors. Private foundations. Some legitimate. Some questionable.”
He paused.
“One payment came from Simon’s company.”
My mouth went dry.
“How much?”
“Twenty-eight thousand dollars.”
“For what?”
“The invoice described it as regulatory consulting.”
“And what was it really for?”
“That was one of the things I was trying to find out.”
“Trying?”
“The investigation was transferred before we finished it. Pike’s lawyers argued that most of the activity occurred outside our county. State investigators took the financial portion. The medical records were protected, as they should have been, and our access became very limited.”
“Then how did you get Simon’s?”
“Because Pike made copies of documents he was never supposed to possess outside the clinic.”
I felt cold.
Gideon continued.
“When investigators executed a warrant related to financial records, they found an encrypted drive. It contained billing documents, correspondence, patient identifiers and scanned reports. Most of it was sealed immediately. I saw Simon’s name because I knew him from across the road.”
“You lived here then?”
“I bought this place twelve years ago.”
Simon and I had moved across from him nine years earlier.
At the time, Gideon had already been the sheriff.
I barely remembered.
Simon had never been interested in neighbors unless they could advance his career.
“What happened to the investigation?”
“Pike resigned from the clinic. Two consultants were charged with billing offenses unrelated to patient records. Pike was never prosecuted over the medical files because the evidence was considered insufficient to prove why he had them.”
“And Simon?”
“Nothing happened to Simon.”
The answer came too quickly.
“You didn’t believe that.”
“No.”
I looked down again.
“Why keep a copy?”
Gideon was silent for several seconds.
Then he stood.
“Come with me.”
He led me down the hallway to a small study at the back of the farmhouse.
Everything about the room looked orderly.
Old law books.
A heavy wooden desk.
Two framed photographs.
One showed Gideon twenty years younger in a sheriff’s uniform.
The other showed him standing beside a woman with dark red hair.
She was laughing.
Gideon wasn’t looking at the camera.
He was looking at her.
“My wife, Eleanor.”
I glanced at him.
“You said she went through something similar.”
“She did.”
He opened a locked drawer.
“Eleanor and I tried for a family for eight years.”
I said nothing.
“She was told she had unexplained infertility. Then diminished ovarian reserve. Then an implantation problem. The diagnosis changed depending on which treatment they wanted us to pay for.”
My stomach tightened.
“At the same clinic?”
“Yes.”
“Was something wrong with her?”
“Not what they claimed.”
He opened a folder but kept his hand on it.
“We learned afterward that one of her early test results had been entered incorrectly. Another had been altered. It took years before we understood that the clinic had repeatedly recommended expensive protocols despite contradictory lab results.”
“Why?”
“Money was part of it.”
“And the rest?”
Gideon looked toward Eleanor’s photograph.
“Powerful patients wanted certain information handled quietly. Administrators wanted successful statistics. Doctors wanted fewer complications. And sometimes the easiest patient to blame was the person willing to keep coming back.”
The truth hit me because I knew exactly who that person had been in my marriage.
Me.
“What happened to Eleanor?”
“Cancer.”
His voice changed on that single word.
“Not because of the fertility treatment,” he added quickly. “I need to be clear about that. She developed pancreatic cancer years later. By the time we found it, there wasn’t much anyone could do.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
He gave the smallest smile.
“She would have liked you.”
That almost broke me.
I looked away.
Gideon pushed the folder toward me.
“I retained copies of several documents because I believed they might matter later. Legally obtained investigative copies. When the case was transferred, I disclosed that I had them. Eventually most were scheduled for destruction after the retention period expired.”
“But you kept Simon’s.”
“I kept a sealed attorney copy with permission during related civil litigation involving Eleanor.”
“Why?”
“Because his report had a notation that bothered me.”
He opened the folder.
At the bottom of Simon’s original semen analysis was a handwritten line.
PATIENT REQUESTS SPOUSAL COUNSELING EXCLUDE MALE-FACTOR DISCUSSION UNTIL FOLLOW-UP.
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
“What does that mean?”
“It means someone documented Simon asking that his infertility not be discussed with you immediately.”
My hands began trembling again.
“Was that legal?”
“I don’t know whether the note accurately reflects what happened. That’s something your attorney will need to investigate.”
“My attorney.”
“You need one.”
“You already gave me a name.”
“Lila Hart.”
“Who is she?”
“One of the best divorce attorneys in Maryland.”
“I can’t afford one of the best divorce attorneys in Maryland.”
“She knows that.”
“And?”
“She agreed to meet with you tomorrow.”
“Gideon.”
“I paid for the consultation. Nothing beyond that.”
“I told you I don’t want charity.”
“And I told you this isn’t charity.”
“Then what is it?”
He looked directly at me.
“Evidence deserves a lawyer.”
That ended the argument.
The next morning, Lila Hart arrived at Gideon’s farmhouse at eight-thirty carrying one leather briefcase and enough controlled anger for both of us.
She was probably in her early fifties, with close-cropped blond hair and the calm manner of someone who had spent years watching wealthy men discover that confidence was not the same thing as legal authority.
She listened without interrupting as I explained the bank account, insurance cancellation, changed locks, car and attorney’s letter.
When I finished, she asked one question.
“Did you tell Simon you were leaving the marital home?”
“No.”
“Did you sign anything?”
“No.”
“Did you authorize him to remove funds from the joint account?”
“No.”
“How much was there?”
“About one hundred and eighty-six thousand dollars.”
She stopped writing.
“All liquid?”
“Most of it.”
“Did you contribute?”
“For sixteen years.”
Her eyes lifted.
“What do you do?”
“I’m a senior grant coordinator for a regional education nonprofit.”
“And during Simon’s first five years building his company?”
“I paid most of our household expenses.”
Lila closed the notebook.
“Good.”
I blinked.
“Good?”
“Not that he took the money. Good that you have a financial history worth reconstructing.”
Simon had always spoken as though his success had happened through sheer brilliance.
Apparently he had forgotten the years when I paid the mortgage while he took no salary.
Lila reviewed the medical report.
Her expression changed.
Not shock.
Calculation.
“Where did this come from?”
Gideon explained.
Lila stared at him for a long moment.
“You preserved this?”
“Through counsel.”
“Chain of custody?”
“Documented.”
“Any privilege issues?”
“Not that my lawyer identified.”
She leaned back.
“Mr. Croft, you may be the first former sheriff I’ve met who organizes old evidence better than most litigation teams.”
Gideon gave no reaction.
Lila looked at me.
“First, we file for emergency financial relief. Second, we challenge the lockout. Third, we demand preservation of all marital financial records. Fourth, you do not communicate with Simon except in writing or through me.”
“And the clinic?”
“That comes later.”
“Why?”
“Because right now Simon expects you to be emotional. Broke. Humiliated. Reactive.”
She leaned toward me.
“We are going to disappoint him.”
By four that afternoon, Lila had filed three motions.
The next morning, a judge issued a temporary order prohibiting Simon from transferring additional marital assets.
By noon, his attorney had received a demand for bank records, company distributions, insurance documents and communications concerning the house.
At two-thirty, Simon called me.
I let it ring.
He called again.
And again.
On the fourth call, Lila texted me.
Answer. Speakerphone. I’m recording notes from my end. Do not argue.
I answered.
“What?”
Simon laughed softly.
“So this is what we’re doing?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“The lawyer.”
I looked across Gideon’s kitchen.
Gideon was repairing the hinge on a cabinet door as though my life were not detonating six feet away.
“You sent me your lawyer first.”
“That was paperwork.”
“You emptied our account.”
“It’s my money.”
“We’ll let the court decide that.”
Silence.
Simon wasn’t accustomed to hearing me speak like that.
Then his voice changed.
“Who’s helping you?”
“No one you need to worry about.”
“I drove past the house.”
I froze.
“You mean Gideon’s house?”
“So you are staying with him.”
“That’s none of your concern.”
“It becomes my concern when my wife moves in with another man.”
“You changed the locks.”
“You always were dramatic.”
Something inside me went completely still.
For six years, I had confused endurance with strength.
That afternoon, I discovered they were not the same thing.
“Simon.”
“What?”
“I saw your report.”
No sound came through the phone.
Not breathing.
Not movement.
Nothing.
Then he said quietly, “What report?”
“The one dated five years and eleven months ago.”
The silence changed.
I could feel it now.
Fear.
“Where did you get that?”
I looked at Gideon.
He had stopped working on the cabinet.
“That isn’t important.”
“Yes, it is.”
“You knew.”
Simon’s voice hardened.
“Those tests were inconclusive.”
“They weren’t.”
“You don’t understand medical terminology.”
“I understand severe male-factor infertility.”
“That report should have been destroyed.”
The second he said it, I knew Lila had been right.
Do not argue.
Let him talk.
“Why should it have been destroyed?”
Simon realized his mistake.
“Rachel—”
That was the first time he used my name since leaving me on the porch.
Rachel.
As though we were suddenly husband and wife again.
“Who gave it to you?”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Rachel, listen to me.”
I ended the call.
My heart was pounding.
Gideon crossed the room.
“You all right?”
“No.”
It was the truth.
Then I looked at the medical report still sitting beside Lila’s legal pad.
“But I think I’m going to be.”
Three days later, I traveled to Baltimore for the appointment Gideon had arranged.
The physician’s name was Dr. Priya Nand.
She was a reproductive endocrinologist who had published studies I had actually read during treatment.
I had once waited six months just to get a consultation with a doctor half as experienced.
Dr. Nand spent almost an hour reviewing my history.
Then she looked at me over the top of her glasses.
“Rachel, I want you to understand something before we continue.”
I braced myself.
“What?”
“Nothing in these records supports the idea that you were solely responsible for your infertility as a couple.”
I stared at her.
She turned one report toward me.
“You had some issues. Mild endometriosis. One period of poor response to medication. Neither is unusual.”
“So I wasn’t infertile?”
“I’m not saying that.”
She spoke carefully.
“Infertility is a couple’s diagnosis unless we have a very specific reason to say otherwise. But if your husband’s original semen analysis was accurate, male factor should have been central to your treatment strategy.”
“It wasn’t.”
“I can see that.”
“Could I still have children?”
Dr. Nand paused.
“We need updated testing.”
My throat tightened.
“But based on what I see here?”
She smiled.
“I see no reason today to tell you that motherhood is impossible.”
I had spent six years waiting for someone to say those words.
I thought I would cry when I finally heard them.
Instead, I sat perfectly still.
Because suddenly I understood something else.
Simon had not merely lied about why our treatments failed.
May you like
He had stolen time.
And for the first time, I wanted every second back.
