My sister had triplets – but the clinic keeps calling to check on “all four.”
She was tired in that deep-down way, but happy, the kind of happy that makes a person look lit up even when they haven’t slept. Three babies, all healthy, all small but holding on. I was the one who took the picture. She wanted to text it to our aunt with the caption “You were right – there’s enough of me to go around.”
She named them Bette, Rue, and Cam. No complications with the birth. Everyone said it went as well as it could have. But then the phone calls started.
The first one came from a nurse on the overnight rotation. Just a check-in. She asked how “the four little ones” were feeding. We figured it was a mix-up – some other family, maybe two sets of twins on the same floor. But it kept happening.
Three days later, a different nurse left a voicemail: “We’ll be stopping by Thursday to verify the ID bands. All four should still have them on.”
We called the clinic back and said no. “Just three,” we said. “There is no fourth.”
They went quiet.
My sister requested a copy of her delivery paperwork, just to see it for herself. When it came through, there were four entries listed under “Live Births.” Bette, Rue, Cam… and a fourth line that only said “INFANT 4 – TEMP ID 209F.”
But that ID doesn’t match any of the wristbands.
Then yesterday,
What They Said When We Pushed
Yesterday a woman called who didn’t introduce herself as a nurse. Said she was from “patient coordination.” Her voice was the kind of flat that you only get from doing the same job for twenty years or from being very careful about what you let into your tone.
She asked to speak to my sister directly.
I handed over the phone. My sister was sitting on the couch with Rue in the crook of one arm and a bottle in the other hand, half-watching something on TV that she wasn’t actually watching. She took the phone, held it between her ear and her shoulder.
I watched her face.
She listened for maybe forty-five seconds. Then she said, “I’m sorry, can you say that again?”
Pause.
“No. No, we didn’t. There’s no – there are three babies. Three. I was there.”
The woman on the phone said something else. My sister looked at me. Not panicked. Something worse than panicked. That flat, underwater look you get when the thing happening is too strange to have a feeling about yet.
She said, “What do you mean you need to verify the transfer?”
She hung up after another minute. Didn’t say goodbye. Just pressed the button and set the phone face-down on the cushion next to her.
“They think we transferred a baby to another facility,” she said. “They’re asking which one.”
Her Name Is Donna
My sister’s name is Patrice. She’s thirty-four. She did IVF at a clinic called Westfield Reproductive about forty minutes from where we grew up, because her regular OB didn’t do the monitoring she needed. Four rounds. The fourth one took. Three embryos implanted, three embryos held on, which the doctor called “remarkable” in a way that meant he’d never actually seen it happen before.
His name is Dr. Gunderson. Tall guy, mid-fifties, the kind of doctor who explains things twice and draws diagrams on the paper cover of the exam table. Patrice liked him. Trusted him.
The nurse she’d dealt with most was a woman named Donna. Donna Pruitt, according to the badge. Heavyset, short hair, always had a pen tucked behind her ear even when she was already holding one. She’s the one who walked Patrice through the whole third trimester. She’s the one who was in the room.
When Patrice called the clinic the morning after the patient coordination call, she asked to speak to Donna.
They told her Donna was on leave.
“What kind of leave?”
Administrative.
“Since when?”
Since the day after Patrice delivered.
The Paperwork
I drove over that afternoon. Patrice had printed everything out and laid it on the kitchen table in three stacks. The discharge papers. The insurance claim itemization. And the copy of the delivery record she’d requested, the one with the four entries.
She’d circled the fourth line in red pen.
INFANT 4 – TEMP ID 209F.
The first three entries had a weight, a time of birth, an Apgar score, and a note about which delivery team member had handled the initial assessment. Bette was 4 lbs 2 oz, born at 11:47 PM. Rue was 3 lbs 14 oz, born at 11:52 PM. Cam was 4 lbs 1 oz, born at 11:59 PM.
The fourth entry had a time. 12:06 AM.
No weight. No Apgar. No team member listed. Just the temp ID and a status field that said TRANSFERRED.
Patrice had been in recovery by 12:06. She’d been under a warming blanket with her blood pressure dropping and three nurses trying to get her stable. She wouldn’t have seen anything. She wouldn’t have known.
I sat down.
“Could it be a data entry error?” I said. “Like, they copied a template and didn’t clear it?”
“Then why does it have a time?” she said.
I didn’t have an answer for that.
“And why does the insurance claim have a line item for a fourth isolette rental?”
She slid that page across to me. There it was. Isolette – Infant 4: 3 hrs 14 min. Billed at standard rate. Paid by insurance without a flag because it was buried in a page-long itemization with the triplet surcharges.
Three hours and fourteen minutes.
What We Know About Temp ID 209F
I spent two hours on the phone the next day. I’m going to be honest: I’m not a person who does well on hold. I get impatient and I say things I regret. But I kept my voice steady because Patrice was feeding Cam six feet away and I didn’t want her to hear me lose it.
The clinic’s billing department said the ID number format was consistent with their standard temp tagging system for NICU intake. They said they couldn’t give me information about any patient who wasn’t my direct family member.
I said it might be my family member.
Silence.
I said, “I think there may have been a fourth baby born during my sister’s delivery and I need to know what happened to that baby.”
The woman on the line said she needed to transfer me to patient relations.
Patient relations went to voicemail.
I called back and asked for Dr. Gunderson’s office directly. His assistant picked up, took my name and number, and told me he’d call back within 24 hours. He hasn’t. It’s been 36.
The state medical board has a complaints line. I have the number saved in my phone. I haven’t called it yet because Patrice asked me to wait. She wants to try to talk to Donna first, if Donna will talk.
What Donna Said
Donna called Patrice this morning at 7:14 AM.
I know this because Patrice texted me immediately after, just: she called. come over.
I was there by 8.
Patrice had written down what Donna said, word for word, in a notebook she keeps by the phone. She does this. Always has. Even before any of this happened, she’s the kind of person who writes things down.
Donna said she couldn’t talk long. She said she was calling from her personal cell and that she’d deny the call if asked.
She said there had been a fourth heartbeat detected in the final ultrasound before delivery. A very faint one. The position was anomalous, which was why it hadn’t shown up in any of the prior scans. She said it was a situation that happens rarely, but it happens: a fetus concealed behind the others, not drawing its own fluid, developing on a separate timeline.
She said when the fourth was delivered, it was alive.
She said it was small.
She said there was a conversation, immediately, in the room, between Dr. Gunderson and two other staff members whose names she wrote down for Patrice. She said she was asked to step out. She said she refused. She said she was told the family had been informed and had consented to a transfer to a specialty facility.
Patrice had not been informed.
Patrice had not consented to anything.
Donna said she’s been trying to figure out what to do since the day it happened. She said she’s sorry. She said she knows that’s not enough.
She said the specialty facility is called Carrow Pediatric Center. It’s ninety miles away.
What Happens Next
Patrice called Carrow Pediatric Center at 9 AM. She gave her name, her date of birth, the delivery date, and the temp ID number.
The woman who answered put her on hold for four minutes.
When she came back, she said, “Yes, we do have a patient admitted under that ID. She’s been here since the 14th.”
She.
Patrice didn’t say anything for a second. Then she said, “Is she okay?”
The woman said she couldn’t give clinical information over the phone without identity verification, but that the patient was currently listed as stable.
Patrice has an appointment at Carrow tomorrow morning at 10 AM. I’m driving her. We’ve got the three babies sorted with our mother, who got on a plane from Tucson last night without being asked, which is the most our mother has ever done in one move.
We don’t know what we’re going to find. We don’t know what was decided in that room, or by who, or on what grounds. We don’t know her name. We don’t know if she looks like Bette or Rue or Cam or none of them.
Patrice keeps looking at the notebook where she wrote down what Donna said. She’s read it maybe six times since I got here. Not looking for something new. Just reading it again.
She told me last night that she keeps thinking about the photo she took after the birth. The one she sent to our aunt. Three babies. The caption about having enough of herself to go around.
She said, “What if I didn’t know I was wrong?”
I didn’t answer. There wasn’t anything to say to that.
We’re leaving at 7 tomorrow morning. I’ll update when I can.
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If you know someone who needs to hear that they’re not crazy for pushing back when something doesn’t add up, send this to them.
For more wild stories, check out how My Best Friend’s Husband Told Me He Hides Things From Her or what happened when My Seat. My Ticket. And Then the Engineer Walked In.
