“He seemed pretty uptight,” Tad said in a more normal tone. “I’d recommend you call him. I know there are some interesting cases that came in during the morning that he wants us to observe.”
“I’m sure there are,” she said. “But I’m flat-out busy on the one that I actually did yesterday, rather than merely observe, and that promises to teach me more about forensics than standing around holding the dick I don’t have, watching a couple more autopsies.”
“I think you’re making a mistake,” he said, clearly offended.
“You’re entitled to your opinion.” She was tempted to addand you’re a hopeless ass-kisser, but she restrained herself. She glanced briefly again at the mortuary techs, whose bored expressions had changed to smirks. They at least seemed to have a sense of humor.
Once inside the residents’ office, which was again a charitabledesignation considering its size and décor, Aria took off her white coat, hung it over the back of the aged desk chair, and sat down in front of the monitor. A moment later she was on the internet. Her goal was to try to figure out which of the major ancestral DNA companies might be the best for finding Lover Boy now that Madison Bryant had made herself incapable of lending a hand. Deciding on which DNA company to use was going to be up to Madison, at least in the beginning.
From Aria’s reading she knew that Ancestry.com had the largest database, which might turn out to be a benefit since matches—people who shared segments of DNA of varying length with the dead fetus—were going to be what she needed. As she scrolled through the website, she saw that it was essentially divided into two parts. One part would help build a family tree through various and sundry records. Almost immediately Aria recognized that this service might provide information about Kera’s family but wouldn’t help with the father’s, so Aria avoided that selection and clicked onTAKE A DNA TEST AND UNCOVER YOUR ORIGINS. That got her to a page where she could click onWHAT YOUR RESULTS WILLINCLUDE. Clicking on this allowed her to scroll throughETHNICITY ESTIMATE, which she wasn’t particularly interested in, until she got toDNA MATCHES. This was what she needed, and the screen looked like the result some previous individual had obtained from Ancestry.com. It showed seventy-two matches with people who were either first or second cousins.
Already Aria was encouraged. If she could manage getting something like that, even one first or second cousin, she would be optimistic that the whole idea of finding Lover Boy would work. With a sense of building excitement, Aria scrolled down farther. All this was only going to cost a modest amount of money, which considering the implications, seemed to be quite a deal. Down near the bottom the screen readGET STARTED IN A FEW SIMPLE STEPS. The first thing she needed to do was to order a kit. The second thing was to activate the kit, whatever that meant, followed by providing a saliva sample.This was an issue that she had already considered since under the circumstances she would be unable to provide saliva for either Kera or the fetus. What Aria intended to do was contact the company and make sure that she could supply blood instead. Her research had suggested the blood would actually be better, anyway.
Aria’s eyes then shifted to the final step on the current screen she was looking at. It was then that her building excitement took a sudden nosedive. She read that in roughly six to eight weeks the results would be available.
“Six to eight weeks!” she said with utter disdain, slapping a hand to her forehead. “That’s a disaster.” She tipped back in her chair. She couldn’t believe it. She assumed that such DNA testing was all automated and done with microarray chips. Why would it take six to eight weeks? She was only going to be on her forensic rotation for another two to three weeks. Tipping forward again, she searched for a phone number to call the company. Although the website was generally rather well designed, finding a phone number to call was not easy and took persistence. When she finally got a customer service representative on the line, the woman wasn’t able to provide an explanation for the six- to eight-week wait other than suggesting it had to do with sheer volume. More to the point, the woman seemed to have no conception of the actual process, nor did she have the ability to connect Aria with anyone who might. Out of frustration, Aria ended up just disconnecting while the woman was in midsentence trying to extol her company’s level of service once the results had been obtained.
With rising frustration, she quickly checked the rest of the main ancestral DNA companies that she had read about the night before, namely Family Tree DNA, 23andMe, and MyHeritage. Although all three had slightly shorter estimated sample turnaround times than Ancestry, they were in the same ballpark, with the shortest being 23andMe, which estimated their results would be available online between three and five weeks. Still, that was much too long as far as Ariawas concerned. She also tried calling these other companies, but the result was similar to her experience with Ancestry, namely that she only got to speak with a customer service representative who had little comprehension of the actual technological way the results were obtained. At the same time, all the representatives seemed to be reasonably conversant with the basic concepts of DNA science, including knowledge that their respective companies were relying on SNPs, or single-nucleotide polymorphisms, as the way that people’s DNA or genome were unique and relatives were varyingly similar, depending how close the relative was.
Aria rocked back again in her chair, wondering if she would have to give up this mini-crusade practically before she started it. As a soon-to-be senior, fourth-year pathology resident, she had too many other claims on her time than trying to figure out Kera Jacobsen’s fetus’s paternal family tree. Once she left the OCME rotation, which she considered almost a vacation, she would be back to working ten- to eleven-hour days with real responsibility. But the pause gave her an idea. Realizing that the ancestry DNA or genetic genealogy was a growing business as reflected in the long wait for samples to be analyzed, she reflected that there must be a lot of companies that were comparative start-ups, eager to get their firms in a competitive status with the big four, which were getting a lion’s share of the business.
Tipping forward yet again, Aria googled “ancestry DNA companies,” and as usual, Google came through. One website jumped out at her. It was a list of some thirty to forty testing companies. As quickly as she could, she started looking at all the websites, trying to find companies that were new to the game. After she found a handful of newbies, she started to locate them with the hopes of finding a relatively new company in the New York metropolitan area. After only fifteen minutes she hit gold. GenealogyDNA was fresh on the ancestral DNA scene and its home office was right there in Manhattan’s touristically trendy Meatpacking District on West 13th Street, whichwas a cab ride away. When Aria used Google Maps to locate the address, she was moderately taken aback from glancing at the photo. It was a six-story brick building devoid of any decorative elements but with a stylish boutique and a contemporary restaurant on the ground floor. The upper five floors were apparently recycled commercial space, which she assumed could be rented by a start-up for a decent rate in the near term, at least decent for Manhattan.
Going on the company’s website, which wasn’t as polished as those of the big four, she found another difference. The number to call for information was much easier to find, suggesting GenealogyDNA encouraged potential customers to call. And even more important from Aria’s point of view, there was a number to call for investment opportunities, meaning they were surely new to the game.
For a few minutes she stared at this second number while remembering how unproductive her calls to the other companies’ customer service personnel had been. She felt she needed to talk to someone a bit higher in the company’s hierarchy if she was going to have any luck circumventing this sample-processing delay. If she could manage to talk with one of the principals, she might have the best chance. But if that were to work, she needed a much more compelling story than trying to find the lover of a person who overdosed on opioids, as that was just too common and uninspiring. Aria knew enough about human foibles to know you had to offer something to get something.
Hoisting her feet onto the corner of her desk and crossing her legs in the process, which was Aria’s posture for serious thinking, she tried to put herself in the shoes of the people who had started GenealogyDNA. Although fully accepting she was laboring under stereotypes, she envisioned they were probably a group of relatively young, male, Silicon Valley–type computer techies, all of whom had been nerds in high school. Thinking along those terms, she tried to come up with something sexy, which she thought shouldn’t be too hard since the Kera story did involve consummated sex as evidenced by the existenceof the fetus. But nothing came to mind that wasn’t overshadowed by the drug issue. That was when she had to abandon the overdose situation totally. In fact, she suddenly realized that whatever story she was going to come up with, it had to involve life, not death, meaning the father needed to be found to save the kid’s life. That was the kind of story that people could sink their teeth into, especially a young genetic genealogy company trying to make a go of it among giants.
All at once it came to her in a sudden burst of creative conceptualizing. It had to involve a child because kids always pulled on everyone’s heartstrings. By closing her eyes, she could envision a cherubic toddler with a rare disease, the kind of disease that spelled doom in most people’s minds. As a pathologist she thought immediately of an aggressive childhood leukemia, which heretofore was synonymous with death, yet against which great strides had been made of late.
“Perfect,” Aria said as she let her feet fall to the floor. Once again, she pulled herself up to the desk. All at once the whole story came to her. It involved a three-year-old boy conceived with donor sperm who was in a terminal state with advanced leukemia and who desperately needed a bone marrow transplant if he was to survive. Complicating the situation was the recent death of the mother days ago from a broken heart. Aria had to smile at herself for that last part, knowing she’d have to come up with something better, like an auto accident, while racing to the hospital. “Who could resist such a story?” she asked herself. And best of all, she imagined that the powers that be at GenealogyDNA would see the whole thing as a potential publicity gold mine even though Aria would have to remind them that because of HIPAA rules, they couldn’t be told the name of the stricken infant or the dead mother.
With significantly more confidence, Aria dialed the number on the GenealogyDNA website for those people interested in investment opportunities. When the phone was answered after the second ring, she was even more hopeful. When she’d called the other genetic DNAcompanies, the phone had had to ring ten or more times before being answered.
“GenealogyDNA,” a male voice said. “How can I be of service today?”
“My name is Dr. Aria Nichols, and I’m a senior resident in Pathology at New York University,” she said. As someone who wasn’t always glued to the truth starting in childhood, she knew from experience that if she was going to lie, it was best to at least start with the facts.
“And I am Vijay Srinivasan. How can I help you?”
“I’m calling about a major problem here at the Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital,” she said, quickly improvising. “I was hoping that GenealogyDNA might be able to help because genetic genealogy helped find the Golden State Killer. I assume you remember that story?”
“Most definitely,” Vijay said. “That was good PR for our business.”
“I can understand why,” Aria said. “We, too, need to find a missing man. What I’d like to do is speak with someone in your company’s hierarchy and not a customer service representative.”
“I am one of the founding partners,” he said.
“Well, that’s perfect,” Aria said. She hadn’t expected to hit pay dirt so quickly. “Before I start, I need to be certain you are aware of HIPAA rules that protect the confidentiality of patient information.”
“I understand about patient confidentiality,” Vijay said, “but I don’t know anything about HIPAA, per se. Is that an acronym?”
“It is indeed,” she said. “To tell you the truth, I always have to look up the actual name, but the long and short of it is that I will not be able to tell you any of the names of the people involved in our situation even though one is deceased. Nor will you be able to use the name of our institution if and when you wish to tout this endeavor for the benefit of your company. Is that understood?”
“I believe I understand,” Vijay said.
“Then let me tell you the gist of the problem,” Aria said. “We have a very sick toddler who was conceived with donor sperm and whosemother just passed away a few days ago. To make a long story short, we desperately would like to find the father to obtain some donor bone marrow. Has GenealogyDNA had any experience helping people who have been conceived with donor sperm find their genetic fathers?”
