The Retrievals - Ep. 2
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At first, the nurse uses the federal at work SHE, takes files from storage and injects her self in the bathroom. Then SHE started taking the BIOS home, a thirty minute drive to a connecting to town in a more rural part of the state. This is where she's raising her children, three of them.

It's a wealthy town, but not hedged fund wealth. Kids go to public school and play little league for a while. The nurse taught CAD ism at the church. The nurse's divorce from her children's father, who, according to court documents, is a volunteer presence in their lives.

The tooth fery will be coming a lot because i'm going to knock your teeth out and maybe the ambuLance will have to come because your job baLance will break is an example of the kind of thing that nars claims the father has said. According to a police report, the father denies making this in all such threatening statements, but the children have said they are scared of him. The nurse scared when they are with him.

The nurse sees herself as a stable parent. That is who he needs to be. But now SHE is doing this thing, this thing that he needs.

In fact, he needs IT to remain stable. Sometimes he tries to stop, but SHE can't. SHE can go for a couple days without using, but as the withdrawal symptoms build, SHE starts again. What he does is he removes the fenner from the vile with a surrender and then replaces IT would sAiling one clear liquid with another.

No one can see SHE does this accountable times, and he returns an accountable number of these vials that say they contain fatal, but actually contain sAiling to the stock of drugs at work. And then one day, october thirty, twenty, twenty and nsc, sio logic notices that a cap comes off a vile too easily. The loose cap is discovered on a friday.

And the following wednesday, the nurses questioned. SHE denies taking the fat mall, but when the results of her drug test come back positive, the nurse confesses she's terminated. In january twenty twenty one, law enforcement authority send out a letter to approximately two hundred patients at the old clinic telling them they are, quote, a potential victim in a federal criminal case.

How old fashioned that news keeps arriving in the mail. But unlike the letter from yale, this letter demands to be noticed is from the department of justice. And this letter says the name of the nurse. The name of the nurse is dona.

Dona was a person handling all the phone calls. Dona was the person ordering your mads. Dona was a person you called when you are in pain.

Dona was, no, was all dona. In fact, I had the number saved in my phone. Is dona R I okay?

Danna was not every patient's point person at the clinic, but for a time he had been layers the daily. A got the envelope from the department of justice. SHE brought a into her kitchen.

And I remember opening IT up. IT was like one page, and I saw her name. And I I like, I mean, I just like a loss that I was like .

A E being lay a newton na. But now that the nurse had a name, something was different for even the patients who'd never encountered her. Now there was a distinct individual behind their pain who was SHE.

The patients googled her. One woman has been noted that danna had become a nurse when already in her forties. What was up with that? Another patients, zillow, ed, her house. Someone else looked up. Whether her town had, well, water. I did, because I could anyone really be sure sh'd replaced fatal with sAiling? And what if he was just refilling the vile from her home tap others look back at my chart messages.

You know, looking back, I know that I did correspond with dona. We talked about medications at one point in my chart messages. Um so I did correspond with her and he did work with my insurance company to get fit, all approved for the procedures and I guess ordered for the procedures.

After a pretty intense google search, I am pretty certain I met dona the couple of times I was at the clinic during the preliminary kind of testing.

The patient identities have shaped the ways the'd made sense of their pain. Now their identities were shaping the reactions to the person who caused IT. What Angela was looking for had as much to do with her own identity as with donas.

Sometimes I have a very hard time connecting with the idea of being a victim, especially in light of my job. So i'm a criminal defense attorney for indigent persons. And there's always a reason why, why did they steal this? Why did this is all occur? Most people aren't just stealing things because it's funny. There's an actual reason behind IT, and I wanted desperately, I think, to give her a reason so that I felt a little bit Better.

What would that so interesting? What how would knowing or imagining her reason make you feel Better .

when you're going through?

I would assume most fertility procedures, but with ivf for me, you're at your most vulnerable. You were physically laying your body on the line, saying, do what you need to do to correct kind of the brokenness. That is me. And so every step of the way is personal. And i've blamed myself and and I wanted to make this not personal that SHE wasn't trying to punish me whether I was twisted however IT was I wanted her justification to feel worthy.

Dona's justification wasn't going to be in google or whether he justified her actions at all. What wasn't her heart, how SHE would explain this, whether he was remorseful or calls that wasn't data, Angela or any of the other patients, we're going to be able to find. The patients wanted to know not just who Donna was, but what her story was.

What was the story donor would tell about her own pain? How would you answer for what he had done from serial productions in the new york times? I'm Susan burton. And this is the retrieval. This is episode to the nurse.

Hey, it's john chase and .

mara from wirecutters, the product .

recommendation service from the new york times. Murray IT is gift giving time. What's an easy get for someone like under fifty bots .

in our gifts under fifty list? I really love this water color set from japan. These beautiful, beautiful colors is something that kids can do.

adults can do. I ve, for all the wire cutter, give ideas and recommendations. Head to N Y times dot com slash holiday guide.

The department of justice invited the patients to a video conference to learn more about the case. On a thursday afternoon in late january, about fifty patients logged on kd. The addiction researcher .

was among them. And I was at home just sort of peak cover. So I was on my laptop signing into you this call with the department of justice. And you know very quickly they were kind of letting us know um you know we're here to explain to about the criminal case and you know what's sort of at taken what your role might be. This call isn't necessarily know for us to get your stories. We will talk to you and and um but for this moment and this isn't the place for us to necessarily tell our stories, but many women really needed to tell their stories and that was really emotionally, you know, I mean, I think people felt you feel, you feel really like you have to have to get this out. And I just, you know, I heard other women who had nearly Roberto stories to my and just being in this procedure, realizing in the moment that they were having this procedure sober um and even looking to their nurse and having their nurse i'm giving the most second legally give you and then getting kind of similar post procedure false narratives about their pain um so I was just really interesting I mean, I was devastating ating to hear that that you know I was shocked by how many women were on the call and you know how long this had sort of .

gone on and I I remember like I was like I thought I would feel Better hearing that I I felt worse actually yeah you know layer .

was on the call too.

What doesn't you you think that would make you feel Better knowing other people were in pain like you but you don't actually you feel like worse. You feel angry or you feel more hurt. It's more sad. Um there was a woman who talking about how he was screaming out during the surgery but like her voice um you couldn't hear her voice but he was like her either her mouth was open and donor squeezing her hand you know I I still can't get that image on my head, you know.

Donna had been in the room during some of the retrieval. SHE had administer the sAiling herself. Lyn wasn't on the call that day, but when he learned this, SHE was startled.

Know, I just remember thinking, you know, how sick must be be able to do that and then watch the women suffer on the Operating tables, knowing the reason why, and just started trying to figure that out. How you know someone could do that is, you know, tough to comprehend.

These stories raised questions about how danna had reconciled the patient's pain, or didn't has SHE split them off, have profound ally associated SHE would have needed to have been, how deep in her addiction. In a way, these stories speak to the suffering .

of both parties.

but IT is possible to have empathy for addiction and also find some of the interactions the patients were called chilling, like this exchange that one patient remembers having with .

dona after her retrieval. And the next thing I remember is waking up in the recovery room, and I was in quite a bit of pain, a lot more pain than I ever would have expected for an actor val um and danna was my nurse and I remember asking her if it's Normal to be in that much pain and he looked at me and said, yes.

It's almost like washing a kind of like horrell. Where women are all the sudden, everyone's kind of like, oh yeah, I was worried. Oh, I was you know, I was like, I was like a kind of being bomb boarded by all these women who were told to shut the fuck up while they were experiencing something that they knew was wrong.

That was what became alarmingly clear. That became alarmingly clear to me. People had complained .

that something .

was out with the fat. no. People had complained about dona. People had complained about the treatment by the physicians and the nurses.

And you know a certain .

point like not everybody's crazy.

The people from the department of justice tell the patience where things are with done as case. Some of the patients wanted know about yale shouldn't yell be responsible, but that's a different question. That will be a different case and not one the department of justice will handle right now. They're working on a predial with dana, which means that will likely not be a trial, that there will be a sentencing hearing that the patients can attend. Its possible downtown will be sent to prison layer isn't sure how he feels about this.

I had to think long and hard as a person again who teaches work on injustice, conservation ma I I had to think about what I meant for me as someone who'd been injured, victimized, hurt, abused then um what I what I need, what I want the outcome to be for someone who would inflicted that on me and other people. You know, there's this whole evolution movement going on. So you have to think like, well, what do I do?

I want to do, want to see this person to jail. What do I want? What do I want to have happen here? What is like the right outcome?

For months after that call, layer would continue to restore with questions about the right outcome for kd, the addiction researcher, at least part of the right outcome was already clear .

during the the call about the criminal case. You know, my immediate take was more about this system, you know, yells responsibility.

And what kind of system was in place or not in place that allowed this to happen? You know, why were we ignored when we were reporting pain? So many less over so much time? And and I wanted at that time, and I still want to be really careful and sensitive to the other people who were pursuing pregnant y, who were gratefully, very upset with the nurse.

But for me, as someone who studies addiction and works with individuals with addiction, I IT was more important to me that the nurse got subsidise treatment. I don't really believe in prison for a drug crimes. I believe in substance use treatment. Um that was my immediate reaction and I think that's very much founded in in my research.

Kd uses brain imaging to explore how pathways in the brain are altered by addiction, and how people living with addiction have the power to require those pathways to change the way they think and behave. The patients wanted to know what was going on in done his head. Kelly had a picture of that.

Kathy's identity offered her clarity about how the criminal justice system should treat dona, and on that call, SHE learned that her perspective could be taken into account. The patients were told that they could submit victim impact letters to the judge. Kd got to work on hers almost immediately.

You know, I, I, I was careful in writing the letter. You know, I say to you, like, I don't really believe in prison for drug crimes.

You know, I was chatting with that, my bill of professor friend, whose house I stayed out after this agritourism know, getting his advice on writing this letter, like, how can I write letter to a judge that doesn't minimize my experience, but that he mentioned, you know, you can tell a judge, you know, that you don't believe in prison for drug crimes because they do. You know what you can. What you can do is explain based on your expertise, and you know what, you study and research like that, you believe in substance use treatment. We are your preference for that. So we I can read you this letter.

It's not that Katie thought that addiction absolved dona of responsibility for her actions. SHE thought that dona had a great deal of personal responsibility. Kat's argument is about what we do with that in the criminal justice system, where research shows that substance use treatment needs to Better outcomes than incarceration.

IT is my assumption.

Kd finished her letter and sent IT off.

and because of this, I asked for lencs and her sentencing based on my understanding of addiction as a news scientist and addiction researcher, thank you calling person.

I want to read now from another letter to the judge. Dear judge hall, i'm respectfully writing to you on our in advance of my sentencing hearing in this letter, i'm hoping to explain to you what I have done that brings me before the court the circumstances surrounding my actions to express the response that I feel for the crime that I have committed. This is dona.

Of course, the letter is a few pages long and you'll say more about IT, but i'm something here to say that dona has not responded to my many requests to speak with her. I've also not spoken at length with anyone who loves her or was closer her, or who knows her outside of the clinic, also not for lack of trying. I thought carefully about how to tell them the story without her participation. Her case generated many documents that have become part of the public record, documents that include very personal information. I'm choosing to tell a story that includes some of these details, who done IT is and what he was dealing with when he came to the clinic matter especially because by her own telling, what he was dealing with was the reason he did what he did.

Donor herself told a story about what happened to investigators to friends and family. Her friends and family, in turn, told their own stories. I'm telling you about these stories, about how Donna and the people in her life explain these events.

Some of what I know about dona comes from a sentencing memory andel prepared by dona's public defenders. The memo includes more than forty letters from friends and family, beginning with one from donal's parents, and ending the testimonials from people dana has met in recovery. The sentencing memo was both an argument to keep dona out of prison and an intimate look into your life.

Here is how the memo lays that life out. Danna was born in one thousand nine hundred seventy one and group in new ork state, in a place kind of like the one SHE lives now a comfortable town, but not a fancy one. Three siblings, lots of cousins, catholic church.

SHE went to a state school for college in wait when he was home and break. SHE didn't get her nursing license until he was in her forties. And by then her life was complicated.

SHE had three children, the oldest two twins, and he was in and out of family court with her x husband, her father, over custody and visitation. There was D, C, F. Involvement, the finding of emotional neglect against the father, Donna, as the court for protective orders for her.

IT was expensive in intensely stressful. Dona is described in the letters as a devoted mother and a good friend as generous to nature's trusted. Many of the letter writers seem to be working to reconcile their astonishment at what danna has done with the integrity of the person they know.

One woman read an article about IT, and the first time you read the article, SHE thought danna was the one who caught the names stealing the drugs. Most of the letters described this kind of initial shock, and then a quick move to support the the letters were, tension is allowed to exist. Stand out.

The letter from daas parents is one that acknowledges complexity. We saw our daughter starting to break, but he always said he would be fine. Turns out he was not fine.

IT was with great sadness that we read her confession. Our sadness turned to disbelief in anger. We are now at the point of broken hearts.

How could he make the choice as he made? Yes, how could you this? Is a question the letters are trying to answer and the explanation they offer, the central story they tell, has to do with dona's x husband as one friend, sums IT up.

I've done a lot of thinking about what LED donor to do, what you did. And I believe her main problem and what directly LED her actions in this case, is her relationship with her x husband. The x husband's perspective is not represented.

I contacted him through his lawyer. He did not respond. There are lots of examples of the x husbandman's behavior in the court record. The one I offer here is not especially shocking. IT comes from a letter written by the only person who says he knows down as swell.

SHE says that dona didn't asked her to write this letter that he saw down a sitting alone in her car at soccer, and he approached her. This writer characterized as down as excess behavior, as aggressive and often humiliating. SHE says you would see Donna and her x at, quote, opposite ends of the soccer field, each trying to be there further children SHE often keeps one eye on him waiting for the next outburst unquote. The mother who is always alert for an explosion, that kind of vigiLance, these letter seem to be saying that kind of vigiLance can reach you.

So when the story told by the letters, this chronic stress builds and builds for dona until he reaches what many of the writers refer to as a breaking point, what exactly is that breaking point? That is a part of the story donor writes herself that's coming up when episode two of the retrieval continues.

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The way danna explains IT in her letter, he started taking the federal during covered SHE tells a story about her x has been taking the kids for vision in march twenty twenty scary time, right? Everybody newly shut inside their houses. Everything closing down.

Donnas ax has been sick, a stomach bug he calls IT and has postpone a scheduled visit the night the kids finally over to their fathers. IT seems like he still sick. They call her and they're like, dad is cuffing a lot and he's shivering under three blankets on the couch and he said, it's hard to breathe and that hurts to breathe.

He claims that he's negative for covered, but he winds up in the hospital for over a month. Donna is frightened for her children and his furious at her ex for knowingly exposing them to his illness, rather than cancelling the visit as a precaution after his home and recruited, he wants his regular resort with the kids, but danna wants proof that he's no longer contagious. When he refuses to let them see the children, he takes her to family court demanding saw custody. This is entry number two hundred and five in their docket. And for dana IT is a tipping point.

I was overwhelmed .

by the sense that I would never be free, SHE writes that I would have to take more time off of work, find more money to pay the lawyer, and engaging yet more litigation, SHE continues. I suddenly quite cy, or think straight anymore. He says that IT was around this time, that I I resorted to taking finial at work.

Dona says that a few years earlier, he had a prescription for pain in her feet. During the course of time that I had the prescription, I did end up taking more than prescribe as a coping mechanism. I turned defender because I knew from prior experience with narcotics that I would help me to cope emotionally and mentally with what was going on in my life, and helped quiet IT and keep my mind calm in those moments is what I felt I needed to do to endure and hold IT together for my children. How this makes any sense is difficult to convey.

Dona is far from the only medical professional to have a substance use disorder. That part is not unusual. I asked to form a co worker of donors.

What might have happened if dona had told someone at the clinic that he was addicted defense and that he needed help? I don't think medicine tolerates that, the former co worker said. Even then we say that we do.

I think she've lost her job. The people I talked to who worked at the clinic with dona characterised her in different ways. Dona was not touchy, fully done was efficient her presence was author ative no nonsense done was attentive.

SHE seemed like SHE genuinely cared. There were also more negative impressions. Donna was called not empathetic SHE was like these patients complain so much.

Dona's former co workers knew that he was contending with a lot at home when her x was in the hospital, all nurses hoed. He would die, one person said. This is the exchange that I found most telling.

I asked one former co worker who was done a close to the person thought for a moment, I don't think danna was close to anyone, they said, but I think some of the nurses felt close to her. The yale fertility center is dedicated to helping couples reach their dream of having a family with a team of competence and and compassionate professionals. A promotional video for the yo fertility center shows dona at the clinic, or brett, a White turtle neck under her ground.

SHE looks a little bit like john kua. She's in a room with a patient, and the patient has her sleeve old, and Donna is preparing to drop lood. By helping you navigate the technological, psychological and physical needs of the iva process, you will gain perspective, understand your options, feel fight.

In her letter to the judge, dona describes feeling trapped and stuck. SHE brings up an image of spinning around in a cage, unable to get out. When I see danna in this video, I wordly capable. I wonder about what he felt inside. If SHE felt trapped, everybody saw what was going on with her x husband, but nobody saw that.

Nobody seems to see what's .

really going on with dona until that loose cap. Remember, the loose cap is discovered on a friday. On sunday or monday, it's kind of unclear.

But on sunday or monday, Donna comes to work with one hundred and seventy five used vies of final, meaning one hundred and seventy five miles from which he has extracted from mal. She's been keeping these vials at her house. SHE had been planning to eventually reintroduce them into the supply at the clinic, but now her plans have changed.

That evening at work, he goes out to her car to get close. SHE walks out to the parking lot and from her car gets a plastic grocery bag, and then SHE brings the bag inside and disposes of one hundred and seventy five miles in two sharps containers. It's last ditch behavior, right? It's something you do when you're a frantic, panicked and the giggs up IT also seems like something you do when maybe you want to be kind, when maybe you want to be seen.

A little more than two weeks later, dona will confess to a team of federal and state investigators. SHE would do so without a lawyer present. SHE will tell them how he did IT, as you would puncture the septum of the file of the four times a day to extract finial.

SHE will say SHE always used to clean needle to put the sAiling in. SHE will say that she's been doing this for five months. SHE will estimate that during this time he is tampered with seventy five percent of the feminine, given the patients at the clinic.

SHE will say that some of the vials had all sAiling and that some were a mix. SHE will tell the investigators about her money problems and about her protective orders against her x husband. SHE will tell them about the stress in her life. SHE will tell them that her children don't know, and at the end of the interview, you will tell the investigation that talking them has been the best thing for her and that SHE feels much Better.

Dona sentencing hearing is scheduled for tuesday morning in may. It's going to be hybrid. You can attend on zoom or in person.

Most patients who decide to go will attend on zoom at spring twenty twenty. One of the pandemic vaccines are still new. IT doesn't feel like a whole new world yet, but they decided he will go in person.

I cannot needed to see her. Was fascinated with how he was going to fashion herself in this hole, in the, in the theater, right? So I, I, that I was fascinated by that.

And also I was again, i'm like, I was really, really angry. I wanted to see if he was up sad. I wanted to see if he was. I wanted to see if you're gna cry.

But layers still ambivalent about what he wants to happen to. Dona.

I heard fifty one to sixty three months, right? And I had to do the mass, my head, okay, fifty one. And I think they had like, reduced because he was admitted to being guilty. The time that he could potentially be sense was was produced I remember already mean, like I don't know, I feel about .

that I don't want people .

to go to prison. But but at the same time, but what do what do we want to have happen?

What happens to dona and whose pain matters more, that's next on the retrieval.

The retrieval is produced by me and Lawrence r. cheskin. Laura edited the series with editing in producing help from Julie snyder, additional editing by Katie mango and irag lass research in fact checking by then fAiling and kate lin love music supervision, sound design in mixing by fb win with production help from a shell navara original music by color alone and music fixing by toma poli in a tuba is a supervising producer for serial productions at the new york times. Our standards editor is Susan westling legal review by dana Green, art direction from popular delkin producing help from Jeffery maryna Kelly do ron beri desert evoke a and initially sam donner is the assistant managing editor, special thanks to peer. The retrieval is a production of serial productions .

in the new york times.