Every Precious Thing

actually pretty cool. While I was there, they ran a few tests, and told me they’d call me later to let me know how much I would be paid if I chose to sign up.”

“I assume they called,” Logan said.

She nodded. “That evening. They said I was in particularly good health, and that I fit a specific profile one of their clients had been looking for. The offer was for sixty-five thousand dollars. A month or two prep before the pregnancy, the pregnancy itself, and the birth. That was it. Sixty-five thousand dollars for maybe eleven months total, and I could still work.”

“I couldn’t believe it,” Diana said in a low voice, as if she were caught in the memory. “It was more than we could have hoped for. Sara could use that money to go to school and get a degree. She was going to do something better. Exactly what I’d wanted.”

“Something obviously wasn’t right, or we wouldn’t be here,” Logan said.

“Everything went fine until the fifth month,” Sara explained. “I was visiting Dr. Paskota. She told me an irregularity had popped up on one of the tests. Nothing to be worried about, but she wanted to do an amniocentesis as a precaution.”

Diana said, “Sara was worried about the baby, but I was worried about the money. She’d only get a small portion if something happened with the pregnancy. I don’t mean that to sound cold-blooded, but Sara was my concern.”

“It was several days before I got the call,” Sara said. “I was a wreck by then, worried that the baby was having problems I could do nothing about. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t mine. I cared about her. So much. The caller wasn’t Dr. Paskota, but a woman who said she was one of her nurses. She told me the doctor wanted her to call as soon as they got the results back. She said that everything was fine. I’ve never felt so relieved in my life. But then she told me something else. ‘I didn’t realize you were also the egg donor.’ I thought I misheard her so I asked her to repeat what she said. That’s when I found out that I wasn’t just a surrogate. I was the actual mother. When it became clear to her that I had no idea, she said, ‘That’s what I thought. We need to talk.’ I was confused and scared, but I agreed to meet a few hours later, and took Diana with me.”

“The woman told us to call her Brenda. When I said I didn’t remember seeing her at the doctor’s office, she said that was because she didn’t really work there. We almost left right then, thinking she was just some crazy person trying to scare us. But Brenda said enough for us to hear her out.” Sara paused. “She said she worked in the lab that handled the tests, and took it on herself to run a DNA match between the baby and myself. I was definitely the mother.”

“She didn’t just happen to work at that lab, though,” Diana clarified. “She said she’d purposefully gotten herself hired there.”

“Right.”

“Why would she do that?” Logan asked.

“Because they handled all of Dr. Paskota’s tests,” Diana said.

Sara nodded. “Brenda told us she had a cousin who’d been recruited by Dr. Paskota. After a while, Ruby- that’s what Brenda called her-began to get suspicious that something wasn’t right. She talked to Brenda, who was actually a lab tech at a hospital across town, and said she was going to start asking some questions she should have asked a long time ago. Two days later, her car was broadsided by a truck that had lost its brakes. Brenda didn’t like it, not at all, so she started digging.”

A baby mill, Logan thought. There were no barren families, at least not those who were looking for surrogates. The doctor was creating the product, and undoubtedly selling them to the highest bidder. Though he was sure that had to be it, he said, “So what did she find?”

Sara looked too distressed to continue, so Diana took up the story. “Dr. Paskota had set up a program that has one purpose-to insure the health of its clients.”

“Insure? Like insurance?” he asked.

Diana shook her head. “Not in the way you’re thinking of. Something a bit more tangible.”

How does selling babies insure health? “I’m not following.”

“It’s a long-term plan,” she said. “People. Genetically matched people.”

He stared at her, still not getting it.

“If you’re rich enough and still relatively young,” she said, “why not hedge your bets against the future? Thanks to Dr. Paskota, somewhere there’s a person, your offspring, just waiting in case you need…anything.”

Logan’s lips parted in horror. “I hope I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying.”

“I doubt it,” Sara said. “Heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, whatever-perfectly matched to you, just hanging around in case you ever needed them.”

He hadn’t misunderstood. It was…inhuman.

“Do you have proof?” he asked.

“The fact that they have your father isn’t proof enough?” Richard said.

Again, Sara put a hand on her brother to calm him down, then said, “That’s what Brenda had been collecting. We made plans to take what she had to the FBI. I was going to be the final piece of evidence, an actual person still in the process. Only she didn’t show up when she was supposed to, and on the news that night, there was a report about a woman who had been murdered while getting money from an ATM, a lab technician named Monique Pond. The picture they showed was Brenda’s. I immediately called Diana.”

“If Dr. Paskota knew about Brenda, she probably also knew that Sara had been talking to her,” Diana said. “Hell, I was concerned someone was waiting outside Sara’s apartment to mug her, too. I told her to pack only what she really needed, then sent Richard to pick her up. I was right. Someone was waiting. The doctor and one of her men.”

“They tried to grab me when I came down,” Sara said. “Dr. Paskota said I was going with them someplace where they could keep an eye on me until the baby was born. Whatever kindness I’d seen in her was gone.”

Her brother grinned. “They weren’t expecting me, though. Dislocated the guy’s shoulder and broke his leg. The doctor I only knocked to the ground so she’d get out of our way.”

Quite a family, Logan thought.

“We’ve been hiding Sara ever since,” Diana said.

“Hold on,” he said. “What if you’d never found out and had Emily there? Then what?”

“They would have paid me and I would have gone on my way,” Sara answered.

“And Emily? What would Dr. Paskota have done about her? She can’t just stick all these babies in a room until they’re needed.”

“She doesn’t have to. This isn’t the only thing Dr. Paskota does, though there’s no doubt it makes her a ton more money than anything else. See, the other thing she does is help match newborns with families wanting to adopt. It’s the perfect cover. When one of her special cases comes up, she can just add the baby to the mix, and carefully track them as they grow up. Once a special child reaches sixteen, he or she becomes viable. If the client associated with that child ever needs a kidney or, say, a heart, the child is simply snatched and…harvested. The doctor makes money on both ends-the clients who are buying the insurance in case they have a need someday, and the parents who think they’ve just adopted their dream child.”

“Has that happened?”

Sara shook her head. “From what Brenda could learn, Dr. Paskota had only been doing this special service for about twelve years, which means about fifteen now. Those first kids will soon become viable, and then it becomes a waiting game.”

“They may never be used, though. Not everyone’s going to need a transplant.”

“True, but remember, to the ones who’ve paid for these kids’ existence, the cost is minimal so it’s worth the risk. Most of the children will probably live full lives, but not all. No way was I going to risk Emily’s life like that.”

So horrifying, yet so simple. Logan wondered if there were others doing something similar.

“Why didn’t you go to the FBI on your own?”

“We didn’t have Brenda’s proof,” Diana said. “Why would they believe us? The three of us with our less- than-stellar family history versus the good Dr. Paskota? A woman who’s helped hundreds of deserving families get matched with ‘needy’ children? Not only would all the adoptive parents come to her defense, but her wealthy special clients wouldn’t want their involvement in her program exposed. They would do anything to help her keep things quiet. The FBI would never listen to us.”