Read Online Square in the Face (Claire Montrose Series) by April Henry - Free Book Online

It’s kind of an unusual problem. About ten years ago, my friend had a baby at that clinic. You know how it works, right? You give up all rights to contact the child.” He nodded. “But see, now she has another child, Zach, and he’s got leukemia. He may need a bone marrow transplant, but there’s no match in the national registry.”
    Dr. Gregory’s reply was carefully phrased. “Does she know that even if she does find the child, the chances of a half-sibling matching aren’t much better than an unrelated donor?”
    “That’s the thing. The baby she gave up and Zach - the child she has now - both have the same father. Lori and Havi broke up around the time she got pregnant and then got back together a few years later. They have another child, too, a little older than Zach, but he doesn’t match. They’ve thought about trying to conceive another child as a possible match, but the doctor says there’s no time.”
    “Who’s the pediatric oncologist?”
    “Dr. Preston.”
    “I’ve heard he’s a good man. I’m sure he’s doing everything he can. But as for Dr. Bradford, that’s a tricky one.” Dr. Gregory seemed to be thinking something over. His voice dropped. “This is all off the record, right?”
    “Record, what record? This is just me, Claire Montrose, talking in my” - she was about to say bedroom, but switched it to -”house.”
    “I’ve heard that he’s been up before the board several times, but ultimately nothing ever came of it.”
    “The board?”
    “Of medical examiners. There’s been a few complaints about his clinic over the years. Not as many as you might think, even though he runs a fairly unorthodox set-up. But there’s so much money involved that all the parties have some incentive to look the other way.”
    “If there’s a lot of money involved, isn’t that getting pretty close to buying a baby? And isn’t that illegal?”
“Tell that to the person who pays fifteen thousand dollars for an adoption.”
    “Fifteen thousand?” Claire echoed.
    “That’s how much one of my patients just paid for a one-year-old girl in an open adoption. The child’s mother was a stripper with a taste for meth, so my patient is paying a lot of money for a baby that may or may not have been born drug-addicted, and quite probably spent her first formative months in a less than ideal environment. And my patient got that baby through a strictly legitimate agency. Now just imagine how much someone would be willing to pay for a brand spanking new - excuse the pun - white baby, certified drug-free, whose birth parents are guaranteed to be college students with above average IQs. And on top of that, the baby comes with absolutely no strings attached, no birth mother who’s going to want to stay in the picture. How much would that be worth to someone?” He answered his own question. “I think Dr. Bradford’s prices start at one-hundred thousand dollars.”
    Claire realized there was something wrong with his scenario. “But my friend’s husband wasn’t in college. Havi’s smart, but he never went past high school. When the baby was born, he was in the Army.”
    “And maybe the good doctor told the adoptive parents that. And maybe he didn’t. There have been rumors around for years that Dr. Bradford might play a little fast and loose with the truth, especially when it’s to his benefit. One thing nobody doubts, though, is that he cuts all ties between the biological parents and the adoptive parents. Nobody knows except Dr. Bradford, and he’s not telling.”
    “Is that legal?”
    “I think in this state that women have three months after the birth to change their minds about giving up a baby, but I don’t know how well he explains that to them. And with the kind of money he has to hand out, a lot of these girls probably don’t care. Whatever goes on at Dr. Bradford’s clinic might be what libertarians like to call victimless crimes. The parents get the baby they always wanted. The