“Oh, can I please go with you, too? You can’t hear the heartbeat for the first time all by yourself.”
“Aw, thanks, yes, come,” Christine answered, touched. “I still can’t believe this. It’s all happening so fast, it’s like everything went to hell in a handbasket in just one day.”
“Everything’s going to be okay, honey.”
“You think?” Christine wanted to believe her, but didn’t. She checked CNN, where political pundits were arguing, and the closed captioning read REPUBLICANS BACK NEW JOBS BILL.
“Yes, I do. You guys are too good together.”
“We used to be. I don’t want to sue Davidow, but I feel like it’s the only way I can make Marcus happy. The way I look at it, I’m trying to save my marriage.” Christine swallowed hard, feeling a wrench in her chest.
“This is not going to break up your marriage.”
“I don’t want a divorce. I love my husband. I do.”
“I know you do,” Lauren said, warmly.
“But I’m not giving up on this baby,” Christine said, meaning it, too.
“Hang in. Let’s see what the lawyer says.”
“Right, because lawyers are always so helpful.”
And they both laughed.
Chapter Thirteen
Christine and Lauren exchanged glances as they sat down in the waiting room of Leonardo & Associates, with its unique decor. According to a wall of laminated news articles, Gary Leonardo was known as “The Lion” of the Medical Malpractice Division of the Connecticut Bar Association, and his firm name was engraved into a gleaming bronze plaque in the shape of a lion’s head. Two gold-toned lion statues held up glass end tables, and the lamp bases were black statues of roaring lions. They flanked the black leather wing chairs on which the women found themselves.
Lauren leaned over. “He likes lions. We get it.”
“Bingo.” Christine forced a smile, knowing her best friend was trying to cheer her up.
“He inspires fear. He’s the king of Connecticut.” Lauren snorted, quietly. “It can be very dangerous here. Those hedge funders, they bite. Plus, he’s very manly.”
“Obviously.”
“He has plenty of sperm. Sperm to spare.” Lauren clammed up as the pretty, dark-haired receptionist rose, with a pleasant smile.
“Gary will see you now,” she said, motioning them forward.
“Thank you,” Christine and Lauren said in unison, rising. They followed the slim twenty-something as she sashayed down the hallway in a flashy red jersey dress, with Christine and Lauren distinctly unfashionable by comparison. Christine had on a blue-checked shirt, blue cotton skirt, and her good sandals, and Lauren had on a navy blazer over a tan muslin smock with her best Danskos, so they both looked like it was Parents’ Night.
“Ladies, welcome!” boomed Gary Leonardo, who pumped Christine’s hand, practically pulling her into his office. “Now I know the whole family! Come in! Siddown, take a seat!”
“Well, thanks.” Christine smiled, off-balance, since Gary struck her as completely caffeinated. His dark eyes danced with animation, and he flashed a broad smile with lightened teeth. He was tan for early summer, and his shiny hair was suspiciously jet-black. He was trim in a European-fit dark suit, crisp white shirt, and a jungle-print silk tie, and though he was on the short side, it did nothing to diminish his power, which seemed to emanate from his life force, like Al Pacino with a law degree.
“I have to win you over!” Gary’s eyes narrowed, with a mischievous glint. “I haven’t yet! But I will. I will win you over.” Gary turned to Lauren. “And you are—”
“Lauren Weingarten, her best friend.”
“The best friend! Happy to have you! Welcome!” Gary beamed, pumping Lauren’s hand. “Believe me, I know how important the best friend is. My wife Denise has a best friend. Together, they run my life. They rule my world. They are my sun and moon. Here, sit down. Make yourself comfortable.”
“Thanks.” Christine sat down in another black leather chair, and so did Lauren.
“Ladies, you want a coffee? You want a Diet Coke? I know you do.” Gary gestured at the receptionist. “Theresa, get ’em some Diet Cokes?”
“Thank you, but can I have a water instead?” Christine said, turning to the receptionist, who smiled back before she left.
“Christine, don’t get the wrong idea. Theresa’s my niece. My wife Denise is my paralegal. She’s at a client’s or I’d introduce you. Nothing funny’s going on here. I’m a faithful guy.”
“Good to know.” Christine and Lauren both smiled, as Gary scampered around the side of his massive desk, of antique mahogany with carved curlicues. Matching built-in bookshelves lined the office, bursting with lawbooks, notebooks, files, family photographs, pictures of lions, toy lions, rubber lions, and even a Pez dispenser with a lion top, which Christine recognized as being from The Lion King.
“Welcome to my den!” Gary threw open his hands and plopped into his chair, also of black leather, but the tallest chair in the room. He looked over as Theresa returned with two drinks on a gold-toned tray, which she set down in front of Christine and Lauren, with ice in a glass and napkins for each.
“Thank you,” they both said.
“You’re welcome,” Theresa answered, then sashayed to the door and shut it behind her, which was when Gary’s expression changed, growing instantly serious, and his manner became strictly business.
“Christine, your husband says you’re not on board with this litigation. Tell me why.” Gary opened his palms. “I’m all ears.”
“I don’t think Dr. Davidow did anything wrong. He referred us to the best bank in the country, one that his sister has used.” Christine thought a moment. “Plus, I like him, personally. I don’t want to sue him.”
“Okay, you win.” Gary shrugged. “I only wanted him for leverage anyway. You convinced me.”
“I did?”
“Yes.” Gary flashed his lightened smile. “I want you happy and comfortable. I don’t push my clients. You got the doc off the hook. But Homestead is a different matter. Homestead stays on the hook. My legal advice? Sue the bastards.”
“Tell me why,” Christine said, taking a page from his book.
“I want to give you some background first.” Gary held up an index finger, with a manicured nail. “You need to know where I’m coming from. I’m Italian-American. My family came over in the 1930s, settled in Mystic, my grandfather was a plumber, my father was a plumber, my brother is a plumber. I didn’t want to be a plumber. You know why?”
“No, why?”
“No stakes.” Gary shrugged again. “Nobody cares. Nobody cries. Nobody does something wrong. Nobody does something right. You follow, ladies?”
“I’m following,” Christine answered. It wasn’t difficult.
“Me, too,” Lauren chimed in.
Gary continued, “Also, plumbers, they’re little guys. I come from a long line of little guys. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a little guy.” He gestured down at himself. “So I feel for the little guy. I get the little guy. I’m feisty, and I’m loyal, and so I fight for the little guy.” Gary gestured to the photographs of the lions on his wall. “I took those pictures. I go on safari every year. To Botswana, the Serengeti, I been all over Africa. I drag my wife Denise. I drag her best friend, since she’s divorced. It’s a whole thing. I don’t shoot anything. I would never kill a lion. I’m a vegetarian. I take pictures. I have memories.” Gary pointed to his head. “I remember the lions I take pictures of. The lion, he takes care of every member of his pride. You’re my cub, now.” Gary frowned. “You think you’re in Connecticut, but you’re in the jungle.”
Christine waited, sensed he was coming to some relevant point. Or she hoped he was.
“Let me tell you the facts about the sperm banking industry, and believe me, it is an industry. It is a big, big, business. And in my opinion, it is lawless. As lawless as the jungle.” Gary puckered his lips. “There are no laws governing the scre
ening and testing performed by sperm banks in this country. The United States Food and Drug Administration has some requirements with respect to screening sperm donors, but they apply only to contagious or infectious diseases, like venereal diseases or HIV, which 3319 was screened for.”
Christine perked up at the mention of her donor, and she began to realize that Gary had read their file, probably given him by Marcus.
“There are only two professional associations, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the American Association of Tissue Banks, that have anything to do with the screening and testing provided by sperm banks. They make guidelines for additional screening, like genetic screening, but they are only recommendations. Guidelines, not laws. They’re not enforceable, they have no teeth.” Gary glowered. “As a practical matter, sperm banking is a multibillion-dollar business, and they make their own laws. They’re the boss. They’re the king of their jungle.”
Christine was starting to wonder if she had misjudged Gary. He might have been bombastic, but he was shrewd.
“To come specifically to the point”—Gary pointed directly at Christine—“there are absolutely no laws that require Homestead or any other bank to conduct psychological screening for sperm donors. And because it would cost them money to conduct such screening, they don’t do it. Nobody tells them they have to spend money, so they don’t. They’re a business. They want to maximize their profit margins. They don’t want to spend any money that they don’t have to.”
Christine swallowed hard.
“So they hire nice women to sit down and interview the donors. The interviewer is a college graduate. Is that enough? No. The interviewers don’t have degrees in psychology. They don’t even have a master’s in social work. They’re not a mental health professional, an MHP.” Gary scowled. “Is an interview enough? No. That is not a psychological screening. That is not psychological testing. That’s not the Personality Assessment Inventory Test, administered by a psychologist or other MHP, after an hour and a half of a clinical interview by a psychologist or other MHP.”
Christine understood what he was saying and couldn’t disagree.
“Some banks, like Homestead, administer a Myers-Briggs test. That’s not the equivalent of a psychological evaluation. That’s a test that reveals temperament or style, but it doesn’t tell you any of the psychopathology of the putative donor.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means a true psychological evaluation of the donor, exploring for disorders like depression or anxiety, to find out if the donor is hearing voices or the like, or manifests any issues regarding addictions or disorders like OCD and the rest. Some banks administer a phony-baloney test that somebody made up, which characterizes personality traits. You probably saw that online, with other banks. Did you?”
“Yes.” Christine remembered.
“None of these interviews or tests constitute psychological screening to any reasonable standard of care in psychology or psychiatry. No nice lady with a liberal arts degree will be able to identify, much less stop, a sociopath.”
Christine felt a chill run down her spine. Lauren looked over, but neither woman said anything.
“The other characteristic of a psychological test is that it has reliability and reproducibility. It’s called ‘test-retest reliability.’ In other words, the test will reveal whether the donor has anxiety issues and the same result will occur if he is retested. Egg donors are routinely given those tests, but sperm donors are not.”
“Why is that?”
“It began because egg donation is a more extensive, physically invasive process. Egg donors have to go through cycles of IVF, and they undergo the procedure by which the eggs are retrieved.”
Christine understood. “Egg donation seems like a bigger deal.”
“Yes, and, in the old days, you could donate sperm anonymously, or before the banking industry mushroomed, you could order the donations yourself. You could use a turkey baster, for real.”
Christine had heard that from the techs at Families First.
“They didn’t think about it downstream, in other words, no matter how differently the gamete—that is, the sperm or egg—is obtained, it’s the same as far as the donor recipient is concerned. There is simply no reason that sperm donors should not undergo the same psychological testing that has become the ordinary standard of care for egg donation.” Gary’s eyes burned with a new intensity. “Moreover, the industry’s record-keeping is also unregulated. Patients, or customers, like you are not required to report births or defects to the banks. The banks are not required to report births or defects to anyone above them, like the FDA. So if there’s a flaw with the sample, they may not know, and they keep selling it.” Gary shook his head. “To make matters worse, there’s no regulation on how many times they can sell the same sample. There’s no limit on the number of offspring produced by any single donor. That’s left up to the banks. Some banks limit the number of offspring to 60. I’ve heard numbers as high as 170.”
Christine shuddered.
“There’s no financial incentive to make banks limit the number of times they sell that sample. The incentive is to use it more, you see? The banks pay a fixed cost for the minimal testing they perform on the donor. Most banks try to recoup that cost by requiring the donor to donate for a year.”
Christine hadn’t known that. She’d thought the donors could just donate once. Her head was spinning, and she knew Lauren’s had to be, too.
“Because the banks rule their jungle, bad things happen to people like you, who just wanna be moms. You’re vulnerable, you’re weak. Some of you fight back. You sue. I can tell you about the case of the bank in Wyoming, who sold twenty-year-old sperm. The offspring was born with cystic fibrosis. Nobody tested for CF when the sperm was donated.”
Christine recoiled.
“Let me tell you a recent case that’s something like yours, involving Xytex. They’ve been in the business for forty years, a major bank. Do you know the name?”
“Yes, Families First uses it.”
“Do you know that they were sued last year by a same-sex couple, two women, because their sperm donor become schizophrenic, dropped out of college, and was arrested for burglary?”
“Yikes.” Christine thought it sounded a little like their case. “How did the women know it was their donor?”
“The bank told them their donor’s identity by mistake, in an email. The women started playing detective. They had the name, they looked him up, they found out.”
“My God.”
“By the way, did you know that anonymous sperm or egg donation is illegal in the U.K.? They don’t allow it. Interesting, no?” Gary nodded. “Anyway, to stay on point, Xytex followed the current standard of care, which is asking donors for three generations of family medical history, doing physicals, blood tests, and a minimal amount of genetic testing. And no psychological testing.”
“Did the couple win?”
“Yes.” Gary paused. “It illustrates another problem in their jungle. Even the best banks, like Homestead, don’t follow up on the information to verify that it remains accurate. They don’t follow up to see if any of the donors develop an illness or emotional disorder. They don’t even try. The profile for 3319 that your husband showed me, that’s just a snapshot. You follow?”
“Yes,” Christine answered miserably. That was why they weren’t sure their donor had gone to med school or not.
“There’s no blood test or genetic marker for mental illnesses. So it’s not easy, quick, and most important of all, cheap to screen for. Let me read you something.” Gary pivoted to his laptop and hit a few keys, then read from his monitor, “The Director of Public Affairs for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine was asked about this, and he said, ‘As technical capabilities to do genetic testing and screenings improve, the banks will do that. But it would be incredibly expensive to test for everything.’”
Christine inhaled, despairing. She understood
why Marcus had wanted her to come.
“So you see, it’s about money. It’s business. They could be selling sneakers. It’s all the same to them.” Gary frowned. “They could hire a qualified psychologist to evaluate the donor, but they don’t do that. Families First does, for egg donors. Correct. Props to them. But they don’t do it for sperm donors because they’re not in the sperm banking business. You might want to ask yourself why.”
Christine blinked. “Why?”
“Davidow is doing only what he can do competently. Also, he wants to avoid the exposure. This is the next wave in med mal litigation. Infertility practice is the cutting edge, and there’s going to be more of it, now that same-sex couples can get married.”
Christine saw where he was going.
“So you see why I would advise that you and Marcus sue Homestead. They’re doing wrong. Their wrong hurt you. They rule their jungle. They’re not going to get away with it anymore, not under my watch.” Gary paused. “It’s your decision, but it’s my advice that we file suit for negligence with respect to their psychological screening practices. Also for breach of contract, because you signed a contract with them, and implicit in that is a duty of reasonable care, and I don’t think they exercised that.”
“But how do we get the name of our donor? How do we find out if it’s Zachary Jeffcoat?”
“We find out as part of a settlement. They disclose to us the identity of 3319, and they pay us money damages. If enough people sue them, in time, they’ll change their ways. But I’m not fighting for the world. I’m fighting for you. I’m protecting you.”
“I understand.”
“Now, there’s one thing we have to discuss, it’s personal.”
Christine couldn’t imagine what was more personal than the conversation already.
“Your husband told me you would not consider terminating the pregnancy.” Gary put up his hand again, before Christine could say anything. “Please, I’m only bringing it up to talk to you about timing.”
“What about timing?” Christine asked, but she felt wary.