An unstable infertility doctor obsesses over one of her patients, mothers his child without his consent, and then kidnaps her patient after he and his wife threaten her with legal action.

SYNOPSIS:

Main Characters Michael Reilly: Architect in his late thirties. Naturalized American, originally from Northern Ireland. A man of great reserve who is prone to depression and melancholy, especially when it comes to his inability to conceive a child with his wife. Elisabeth Graf: Infertility doctor in her early thirties. Naturalized American, originally from Germany. Determined in her career at a young age to the point of obsession—an obsession that ultimately leads her to commit a horrible act of medical malpractice and patient violation. Paula Reilly: Freelance photographer in her late thirties. Native Chicagoan; is often outspoken and blunt. Is extremely passionate about her life and her relationship with her husband. Feels anguish over her inability to conceive a child with her husband, Michael. Monte Parisi: Music professor in his mid-thirties. Is a good friend of Michael’s but couldn’t be more opposite in personality; Monte is free-spirited and happy-go-lucky, but has a high sense of morality and aims to do the right thing when confronted with a difficult and life-changing decision. Michael and Paula walk into Doctor Elisabeth Graf’s London fertility office with hopes of all at once starting a new family and repairing their stale marriage and sex life. Little do they know that their new doctor comes with a history...but then again, so does Michael. Elisabeth is instantly intrigued—and becomes obsessed—with Michael and the past he never talks about. After doing some sneaky research into his past, she discovers that, when he was a very young man in Ireland, he had been the shooting victim of IRA gunmen when getting accidentally caught in their crossfire. Reflecting on her dead father’s own tumultuous life, Elisabeth begins to fantasize about becoming the caregiver of an afflicted, bedridden version of Michael and also bearing his child. She sets her plans into reality when Michael and Paula are at their weakest. While both Michael and Paula struggle to overcome marital woes, Elisabeth sneaks some of Michael’s routine sperm samples—presumably to be used for examination only—to a nondescript artificial-insemination center far away from the big city. Forging an identity as a young woman with an absent sperm-donor boyfriend, she undergoes an artificial insemination procedure. An opportunity to cover herself arises when Michael’s friend Monte, much to Michael’s chagrin, courts and later indulges in an affair with Elisabeth, who is only very recently pregnant. After they have been dating a little while, Elisabeth tells Monte she is pregnant, claiming the child is his. He dutifully agrees to marry her in a civil ceremony, and a worried Michael and Paula reluctantly act as witnesses for the couple. Monte and Elisabeth seem felicitous as a married couple initially, so Michael stops worrying about his friend and concentrates on rebuilding his marriage with Paula. Michael and Paula give up on the fertility process for awhile, distancing themselves from Monte and Elisabeth and concentrating on counseling, meditation, and romantic moments to get to know each other again. Meanwhile, Elisabeth gives birth to a healthy baby boy, Karl. After Karl is born, Elisabeth starts prodding Monte for details about Michael, which he dispenses with not a small dose of confusion. Michael begins to suspect that Karl might be his when he sees that Karl has the same minor deformity (webbed fingers) with which he was born many years earlier. He secretly begins thorough and extensive research (including a DNA test); he discovers that, yes, he is Karl’s father and Elisabeth has deceived him and Paula. When Paula learns of this, she flips, and both Michael and Paula sue Elisabeth for malpractice amid a score of other legal grievances. When Elisabeth discovers that Paula and Michael have filed lawsuits against her, she flees, taking Karl with her into hiding. Dismayed, Monte and Michael plan how to find her and bring Karl safely home. In a moment of ritual leisure time after work, Michael falls prey to Elisabeth, who covertly injects him with a sedative to kidnap him without a struggle. Michael awakens in a lakeside cabin, discovering that Elisabeth has wounded him severely in a demented attempt to “keep him around” so that she can nurture him and keep him dependent upon her. After a botched escape attempt, he also learns that she’s studying up on an old practice of performing lobotomies so that she can make him permanently dependent upon her; as Karl ages, he would be less likely to question why his father is always so sick, and would believe whatever lies Elisabeth would feed him. Shocked, Michael now resolves to escape Elisabeth by whatever means necessary. He feigns sleep while she’s in the shower, and steals off into the country with Karl in tow. When he finds himself surrounded by police that Elisabeth has ordered after him, only then does Michael’s horrible experience with his sick-minded captor come to a head.

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