When It All Falls Apart (Book One) by Lucinda Berry

have an M.D. and a Ph.D.?” I asked.
    He smiled easily. “Yep. Did my Ph.D. in molecular biology first. Well, I was actually finishing up my Ph.D. while I was in med school.”
    He was the first genius I’d ever met. He’d probably skipped high school and gone straight to college. His long hair was orange and curly and he tucked it behind his ears constantly. He reminded me of Carrot Top except with a mousey face. Unlike Dr. Koven, he wasn’t wearing a white lab coat. He was dressed in regular business casual clothes. I followed his worn khakis down to his black Converse shoes.
    The other man was a tall Black man who towered over him. He wore a collar shirt buttoned up to his neck. He stuck out his hand next. His hands were soft and nails neatly clipped as if he had recently gotten a manicure, but he had a firm hand shake.
    “I’m Dr. Martin. I’m one of the fellows on Dr. Wilcox’s team.” He pointed to the antsy woman who had taken up a position behind Dr. Wilcox and was devouring her fingernails. “This is Dr. Hettinger. She’s a second year resident.” The woman barely looked up at us before looking away.
    Dr. Koven was busy bringing chairs into the room. It was going to be a long meeting because none of the other doctors or nurses brought anything to sit on when they met with us. The already small room grew smaller. The three of them launched into gathering a detailed family history as if they were writing a novel on our family genealogy rather than trying to figure out what was wrong with Rori. They took out a pencil and paper and began drawing an extensive family tree beginning with both of our great grandparents trickling all the way down to Rori.
    It wasn’t as if our family tree was healthy. We’d had our share of disease and illnesses. David’s parents had both died of cancer a few years back. His side was littered with alcoholics and mental illness and he’d had a cousin who’d committed suicide when he was 22. Nearly half of the women in his family had battled breast cancer and those in the far back lineage hadn’t survived it, but most in recent years had.
    My family tree wasn’t as full of illness as David’s although I had a long history of heart disease which took lots of the men as victims. I couldn’t give them much information about my father’s side because I didn’t have it. My parents had divorced when I was six years old after my father left my mother for another woman. Even though we had illnesses and disorders, there was nothing in our genes remotely related to kidneys or metabolic disorders.
    They drilled us with questions, taking turns being the one to do the asking. Sometimes they asked us the same question twice just in a different way and I felt more like we were being interrogated than undergoing a medical evaluation. It was odd. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would lie about their family history. Would any parent cover up something that could possibly help their child?
    Dr. Wilcox flipped through his notes. “I see that you guys did a series of IVF treatments? Did you have any type of genetic testing done?”
    We did. We’d gotten genetic testing prior to starting our first round of IVF. I wanted to be one hundred percent certain there wasn’t anything medically wrong with either of us preventing us from getting pregnant before we sank so much money into IVF. I also wanted to make sure neither of has had any genetic disorders we could potentially pass on to our children.
    “Dr. Keene was our fertility specialist. He was the one that completed all of the testing.” I answered.
    “Did anything unusual come up on your genetic testing?”
    “Not really. I mean each of us had things that were recessive, but neither of us had anything we could give to our children.” I said.
    “Would you mind if we got those records from Dr. Keene? It would really help us narrow down which tests we want to do with you. I’m not sure if Dr. Koven explained this to you or not, but