He didn't have to do this. He could still back out. She never had to know.
Maybe it was better if she didn't know?
He could still leave. The elevator was just behind him and he could make a quick gataway.
"David?" She exclaimed, surprised. He was the last person she would have expected to open the door to.
"Hey," He smiled anxiously, "I'm sorry to bother you. But there's something…"
Something what? Something she should know? He didn't even know what he was telling her. What he had actually found.
"You're not making sense, David."
"I'm sorry, l, ok can I come in? There really is something we need to discuss."
She motioned him in, closing the door quickly. She kept her back to him, unsure what this was or what he could possibly have to say and needing a moment to think through whether she even wanted to hear him out.
Nothing good ever came for letting him and visitors weren't high on her list of things she currently enjoyed. They always wanted to talk about Josh. Ask her how she was? They couldn't leave her to mourn if she screamed it to them.
"You haven't been this cryptic in long time. "
"I wouldn't have come if I didn't think it was absolutely necessary."
He sat down quickly, motioning for her to sit next to him. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a stack of papers.
"Erica, I'm not here to accuse you or insinuate anything."
She raised a curious eyebrow at him and motioned to the papers. "Just say whatever it is you came here to say."
The papers were official hospital documents with stamps and seals.
"When I was preparing to transplant Josh's heart into Kendall, I ran some tests on Josh, and Kendall to make sure they were a match. And they were. That's not why I'm here."
He pointed to a line mid-way down the page, "This is Josh's blood type," He began, shifting the paper into her hands so he could unfold another. "This is your blood type and this is Jeff Martin's."
"Alright," She nodded. "What's this got to do with anything?"
"Are you sure, I mean completely sure…that there was no one else? That Jeff Martin was the father of the child you went to Greg Madden to terminate."
"There was no one else, David. I was faithful to Jeff."
He nodded and swallowed back a hard breath.
"What? What is that look? I know you David, something's wrong."
"If you're telling me the truth, and Jeff was the only man you were with, then Greg Madden lied to you about who Josh was."
She cocked her head and her face twisted with confusion, eyes darting between the paperwork and David. "I don't understand. Are you saying he wasn't my son? I saw the DNA test, I…"
"He was your son. I ran my own DNA test to be sure. But wasn't Jeff Martin's son."
His words hung thick in the air between them, the realization of what he was actually saying almost to much to bare.
"That's not possible, David. I did not cheat on Jeff."
"I'm not saying you did. All I'm saying is that Jeff Martin was not Josh's father."
The third paper he unfolded confirmed what he was saying.
What was he saying?
He watched the confusion dance across her face. Watched her to read the papers before her, watched her brows mat as she struggled to understand. "But he was my son? You're sure of it?"
"Yes and had your own DNA test. I'm guessing no one ever checked against Jeff.
"There wasn't a need. I believed Greg after the DNA confirmed I was Josh's mother. I believed him when he said that's what he did. Isn't that what he did to me?"
That sick son of a bitch swore that Josh was the rescued and reimplanted, fetus from the pregnancy she'd chosen to terminate. It sounded like science fiction, they had all agreed, but the DNA proved he was her son.
So it had to have been true, hadn't it?
"Couldn't have been," David admonished, shaking his head. "If you were faithful to Jeff, then Greg Madden did something else to you."
"What? What else could he have done to me?"
He was wrong. He had to be. She'd spent so much time coming to terms with what Greg had done. How he'd violated her. Taken away her choice and forced his will. She'd spent so much time pushing through it, to learn to love Josh.
And now it was all a lie?
He shook his head, and shrugged softly. "I don't know, Erica. I've been wrecking my brain trying to come up with something to explain what this means. I really just hoped you'd tell me that you cheated on Jeff and it was that simple."
"Was Greg Madden his father?" She wondered softly, eyes moving from the papers up to meet David's. That would mean that at some point he'd stolen her eggs.
Used his DNA to create Josh.
"No, Greg Madden was not his father." He said it quick, hard, pushing the words out in one breath, before he lost his nerve.
He knew what this meant. What this implied. He understood that he was telling her that Greg Madden had violated her in even more hideous ways than she'd ever imagined.
"That was my next thought. Madden's DNA was on file at the hospital. It was a simple test to run. I had it run three times. It wasn't a match."
"I don't understand."
He didn't either. None of this made any sense.
They hadn't questioned Madden's first explanation because Erica was Josh's mother. The timeline and dates appeared fit. It was crazy, beyond the scope of medicine. But she was his mother, what reason did they have to question what Greg claimed to have done.
"So he stole my eggs while he was terminating my pregnancy?"
David shook his head. "I don't know if that's what he did. It seems like the most obvious answer, though. Madden spent years working on this kind of stuff. He was a pioneer in the field. That's how I met him, working on a project at Columbia. He was brilliant but I always had a bad feeling about him."
"What kind of project?" She wondered quietly.
"He was working on new ways to freeze and store eggs, sperm and embryo's in order to best facilitate transfer to the womb. We were doing full genetic profiles. Trying to see if how they were frozen and for how long effected their genetic makeup, viability, that kind of thing. He was so close to doing it, you know. Creating the first test tube baby."
"That's a far cry from cardiology."
He laughed at the truth and knowledge in her words. He offered her a smile, hoping to diffuse some of the tension in her voice. In her eyes.
If that bastard wasn't already dead, he would have murdered him, himself for causing her this kind of pain.
"It was a worthy program. He really did want to help people and I wanted to be a part of such ground breaking science and medicine. Besides, it looked good on my resume and was a good way to get some grant money down the line."
"If we assume he stole my eggs, and we know he wasn't Josh's father, then someone else must have donated? Someone working with you, maybe?"
This was where she would probably throw him out, while accusing him of being in on the whole thing with Madden.
"I made him four embryo's, using my sample after he explained that he couldn't make them himself and we were between donations."
When he was younger, when they were younger, he and Greg Madden had bore a similar resemblance. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Similar height. He'd seen a photo of Emily Madden and she looked strikingly similar to Erica.
If he let himself think about it, if he wanted to go there, he understood what Greg had actually been trying to do, create an embryo that bore as much of a genetic resemblance as he could to both of them.
Without Emily ever knowing what he'd done or that he was the one who was incapable of having children.
Her eyes went wide and a breath caught in her throat. "Could one of those have been the embryo transferred to Emily Madden?"
He was quiet, watching her for a few moments. She was asking if there was any way he was Josh's father. He'd refrained from running his own DNA because the truth was to much to fathom.
"He was conducting five very similar projects at the same time. Anyone on one of those projects could have done exactly what I did. And we don't know what Greg actually used the embryos for. He was actually doing research."
She was quiet for a few moments, his words racing through her brain. She had barely reconciled who Josh was, how he'd come to be and now he was telling her it was all a lie.
"Does Josh's blood type tell us anything further?"
"It doesn't eliminate me, but it also doesn't tell us anything other than Jeff isn't his father."
"I've seen photos of Greg when he was younger. You two had the same dark eyes, hair and even skin tone. And Josh said Emily looked a lot like me. It makes perfect sense for him to have used the embryos you made."
She said it calmly. Matter of factually. Like she couldn't see the elephant in the room.
Or maybe she couldn't bare to acknowledge it.
"Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? I don't think it is. Do you know what the likelihood of that is?"
"I'd imagine incredibly small. Maybe bordering on impossible. But all of this is impossible, isn't it? None of this should be possible in the face of the science available, yet, it has. I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised if that was our embryo he transferred to Emily."
He searched her face for any hint of fear, worry, of the same unease he felt using words like ours or theirs.
There was none. She didn't seem at all phased by the prospect.
"I'll have the lab run the DNA test. Ensure that it's legitimate, that there are no questions and have the results sent to you. In the meantime, I think you should take this to Jack and Jesse. I'm worried he didn't just transfer to Emily."
"Oh I hadn't even considered that."
"He was so obsessed with you, I can't imagine destroying any further embryos without at least trying to transfer."
She sighed and shook her head. "I don't know if my heart could bare the reality that there are more..."
More what? Would they be her children? Merely offspring? A science experiment?
"I debated whether or not to even come to you with this. The last thing I want to do is make this harder for you. But you have a right to know exactly what Greg did. You have the right to reclaim your life and take back the control he took for you. Whatever the outcome is, you knowing and having the ability to make decisions means he didn't win."
Her smile was small and watery and tears finally welled in corner of her eyes.
"Thank you, David. I mean it. As painful as this is and will be, I do need to know what he did to me. What he did to Josh. Expose all of his lies."
He covered her hand with his and gave it a gentle squeeze. "I'll go tomorrow morning, so you should have the results in a day or two."
He was on his feet and headed for the door, now. She watched him go, watched him pull the door closed behind him.
The papers were spread out in front of her, the results of Josh's DNA test staring up at her.
Bianca didn't understand, she said it was impossible to do what Greg Madden had done. Jack thought the whole thing was some kind of con. Even Josh himself had wondered if Greg was telling the whole truth.
They had chosen to believe, regardless of their scepticism, despite knowing better.
And now she sat in her living room, two weeks on from burying her son, and learning that everything she'd told herself was a lie.
At least Josh had been conceived in love, she rationalized.
Only he hadn't been.
She gathered up the papers, arranging them into a tidy pile for Jack to look over.
David was right. There was likely to be far more to all of this than they could imagine.
She had to be strong. Steady. She had to face this head on.
Find a way to open her heart to the possibility that Josh had more siblings waiting to be found.
She had to take back her life.
And she would.
TBC
