When twins Zoe and Mia Anderson decided to take a fun DNA test to check their ancestry, they never imagined what they would find. As soon as the doctor read the results, he screamed at them to get a lawyer.
At that moment, sitting in their living room, twins Zoe and Mia were surrounded by their family at their graduation party. The room was abuzz with joy and excitement about the twins’ next step into the big wide world. Then their mother walked up to the pair and handed them an envelope they had received in the post. This was it. The girls had submitted their DNA as a fun gag just a few months earlier, hoping to see what lay in their ancestry and share it with the family for some fun. As they opened the envelope, everyone looked on with intrigue. Little did they know how bizarre the results would be.
Each twin looked at their own results separately, having a laugh at the different nationalities that were popping up. But when Mia mentioned one that Zoe didn’t have, she stopped and looked at her twin sister’s results. It was then that she saw something very startling. Ripping her sister’s results out of her hand, Zoe quickly began comparing the two sheets of results. She then turned aggressively to her parents and asked what kind of sick joke they were trying to play.
Immediately, the room hushed down to a whisper. Everyone was taken aback by Zoe’s sudden outburst. What could be the problem? They had never heard her address her parents like that before. It was Mia who stepped in and asked her what the problem was. Zoe promptly showed her sister that the results did not match. What she read was impossible.
However, Mia had a very different reaction from her sister. Instead of lashing out like Zoe, Mia simply laughed and looked at her mother’s face for confirmation of it all being a joke. She had been the one to bring the mail to them, so she must have tampered with it while they were busy with the graduation ceremony. But when she was met with just as much confusion from her parents, her heart began to flutter in her chest.
Zoe was frothing mad. She turned around the room, demanding to know who was playing a joke on them. When everyone just solemnly stared back, she went on to explain. She told everyone how the results didn’t match. Apparently, she and Mia weren’t biologically related at all, let alone twins. With this statement, the thick hush that had fallen on the room suddenly lifted. Everyone was talking over one another in confusion. Mia’s father’s voice rose above the commotion. “That can’t be true,” he stated. “I saw you both delivered. I took you both personally from the nursery. You’re both my daughters. There must be something wrong with the sample you sent them.”
With this declaration, both Mia and Zoe calmed down. Their father was making sense. There was no reason to jump to any bizarre conclusions. Of course, they were sisters. They had shared their mother’s womb and every other second of their journey through life. Someone had made a mistake. They resolved to call the company that did the ancestry trace on Monday morning to lay a complaint and left it at that.
The graduation party continued after that with much joy and celebration. Everyone seemed to put out of their minds the bizarre findings of earlier that evening. Everyone, it seemed, except the twins. Individually, they were both running the scenario through their minds over and over again. However, they were making a clear effort not to let anyone else see their concern, especially each other. But that only managed to last so long. While lying in bed that night, Mia couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. Something was off, and she needed to get to the bottom of it.
What were the chances that a world-renowned company would make such a horrible mistake like that? Getting up quietly, she slipped down the corridor to her sister’s room. Silently, she entered the room, hoping that Zoe was awake.
Sure enough, her sister was sitting on her bed, looking quite nervous. One look at each other’s face, and they immediately knew what the other was thinking. They weren’t going to just let this slip away. They both felt that something wasn’t right, and they had to do something about it. But a part of them wasn’t even sure if they could trust their parents. What if they had been a part of some illegal scheme? What if their father had stolen one of them out of the nursery?
Zoe stopped Mia amidst the conspiracy and reminded her that their mother had been pregnant with twins. They had seen the scanned photos many times in their baby book over the years, so how could this be? What on earth was going on?
Thankfully, because they were 18 years old, they didn’t need their parents’ consent to go to the doctor. They were going to settle the issue once and for all by simply going to their family doctor and getting him to test their DNA. Dr. Pon was surprised to see the girls on their own but welcomed them just as he had many times before. However, when they told him the story about their DNA test, his facial expression lit up with humor. He thought that they were trying to play a trick on him.
But when he saw the girls’ expressions had not changed, he quickly adjusted. He took the documents from the girls and asked them what their parents had said. He then took their birth certificates and photos that they had from the hospital. As much as everything looked above board and right, he couldn’t help but see how anxious the girls were. So he consoled them and told them he would put them out of their misery. He would perform a simple DNA test and show them the results to put them at ease. He was sure that there had been a mistake of some sort.
But when the girls returned just two days later to read the results, they were not met with the happy facial expression of the doctor but rather a distressed one. The grave concern on his face said it all. The girls had been right. The DNA didn’t match. Zoe and Mia shook with fear as they sat across from the doctor. What did this all mean? What were they supposed to do now? Everything about their lives had been a lie. How were they supposed to know their true identities if they had been lied to all their lives?
Dr. Pon took one look at them and simply told them to get a lawyer as urgently as possible. They were going to need it. So Zoe phoned around, looking for a family lawyer who was familiar with this line of work. Before long, she found Michael, a revered lawyer who had worked many cases of lost children and mixed babies before. He vowed to get to the bottom of the mystery.
The very first people interviewed were, of course, the girls’ parents. Naturally, their father was quite defensive at first, but when he realized that the lawyer just wanted to get to the bottom of this issue for the sake of the girls, he complied. It wasn’t easy finding out that his daughters may or may not be his biologically, but he tried to reply to the questions as truthfully and thoroughly as possible. After talking extensively to the parents, Michael concluded that they were just as much in the dark as the girls. He advised that the girls and the parents take one more test to see if their DNA overlapped. This was the best advice they had gotten thus far as it would help to make sense of it all.
So the Anderson family promptly went for more tests, only to discover something truly horrifying. The results of the tests showed that Zoe shared DNA with her mother and father, but Mia did not—not even in the slightest. It was here that Michael made his first prediction.
According to him, he was sure that Mia had been taken from the hospital and given to the wrong parents. Naturally, the parents were fuming. How could this have happened? Mia was their daughter, was she not? She and Zoe were not identical twins, but they both looked like their daughters all the same. Had they all been blind for 18 years? It was a really hard situation to navigate for the family, but Michael did not falter. If this was the case that Mia was not biologically related to them, he was sure that he could trace the whole issue back to the hospital where they were born.
To no one’s surprise, the hospital was extremely stingy. They refused to release any files from the year the girls had been born. Even with their mother’s permission, they denied handing it over. They tried to hide under the guise that it violated the rights of the hospital. At this, Michael went straight to the courts and applied for a subpoena of records. This action proceeded to do something no one had anticipated—starting an avalanche effect no one was prepared for.
The hospital reluctantly released the girls’ files, as well as any other babies born in the hospital around the same time. The Anderson family waited around anxiously to find out if the files held anything of value. When they saw Michael’s eyebrows raise, they knew he had found something. He put two files in front of the family and pointed out one very interesting thing. There had been two pairs of African-American twins born that weekend. All four babies had been girls too. What were the chances that the hospital had made a severe administrative error and, acting in negligence, had switched the babies?
This was all too much for Mr. and Mrs. Anderson. The idea that they had been complicit in the theft of another person’s child horrified them. That and the mere fact that someone had walked away with their biological kin was all too horrific. Mia and Zoe were robust, though. They loved each other and had promised that regardless of the outcome of the investigation, nothing would change between them. They looked at the file of the other set of twins and immediately felt an intense desire to meet them. Michael gladly obliged and invited the girls to meet at the hospital the next day.
From the moment Mia and Zoe locked eyes with Kayla and Tasha,
they knew that everything was going to be all right. There was a very strong sense of familiarity between the four of them, one many years of friendship would struggle to have. Of course, Kayla and Tasha had no idea why they were there. Their parents had just told them they were meeting up with old friends, but when they saw Mia and Zoe, their intuition told them that this wasn’t the case. They just knew. Mia felt instantly drawn to Tasha, while Zoe felt the same connection with Kayla. It was something almost animalistic. There was no explanation or logic to it. The parents of both twins looked on in hysterics. How had this happened? How did they not notice?
Michael immediately ordered more blood tests, this time of each family member from both families. These were then compared to see where the relations lay. Sure enough, it showed very clearly that Zoe and Kayla were twins and Mia and Tasha were too. With these concrete findings, both families joined forces to investigate the hospital. They were not going to stand for the gross negligence they had just experienced.
Michael went to work compiling reports from his sources and confidants, and what he found was simply chilling. One Monday morning, Mrs. Anderson got a call from Michael asking them to meet at a courtroom downtown for an appeal. Naturally, they obliged and made their way down. But when they arrived, they were confronted with a very scary reality.
The courtroom was full of African-American families, all with children of varying age groups. Confused, the Anderson family advanced to try and find Michael. When they did, he explained the grotesque truth of what they were all witnessing. Sure enough, the room had been filled with people who were all just like the Andersons—families that over the last 20 years had been given the wrong baby to take home.
Mia and Zoe could hardly believe their eyes. They were not the only ones to experience such a terrible reality, but they couldn’t find comfort in it at all. Rather, they felt quite agitated. What if they hadn’t done that DNA test? All those people would have never discovered the truth about themselves. How could this be? How could such a famous, well-known hospital have gotten away with such negligence?
Turns out, there was much more to it than they had realized. Along with many other family attorneys, Michael took the hospital to court over their findings. They were determined to make an example of the hospital. They had ruined families for generations. Simply put, the Andersons would never be the same again, nor would any other family. Yes, Mia and Zoe still loved their parents, but Mia had a whole other set of parents whom she shared her genetics with. Would they welcome her mannerisms, even though they didn’t mirror anyone in their family? Would they be able to tell her about her great-grandparents and what they did, and how she got the eye color she had? This was all so new to her and every other child who had been misplaced.
Medical staff from over the decade that this crime had been occurring were interviewed rigorously. The hospital even got to a point where they wanted to out the perpetrator. They didn’t want to be synonymous with such a horrible scandal. It would be much easier to simply blame someone else. The trial took months. All the while, the twins went to college, which happened to be the same college as Kayla and Tasha. They decided to bunk close to one another and get to know each other outside of the drama. The legal battle was proving to be all too much for them. They simply wanted to carry on with life and figure out who they were now that their world had been shattered.
Then, one day, they were called back for a court date, and their parents were insistent that they attend so that they could get some closure. It was believed that they had found the perpetrator, an individual who was solely responsible for all the hurt the families had experienced. When the twins entered the courtroom, they saw a middle-aged woman sitting on the stand. Her scarred face said everything. This was one miserable woman who clearly had a mean heart.
Upon questioning, the truth came spilling out of her ugly mouth. She described in detail how much she detested African-Americans. How she had cared for the babies in the nurseries and only seen hatred when they had cried. She had laughed at them, and when the mothers had experienced pain, she had only sped on with placebo pain meds. This was a horror nurse, if anyone had ever seen one. She was clearly very mentally unstable. Through a hyena-like giggle, she detailed how she had purposefully swapped every African-American baby with another whenever she had gotten the chance. She considered her plan to be the most diabolical yet. She jeered at the audience in the courtroom, calling them stupid for how long it had taken them to figure out that their children were not, in fact, their own.
At this, the judge swiftly shut down the nurse, asking for peace. The audience was naturally ruffled to no end. Mothers were crying, and fathers were yelling at the injustice they had endured. The Andersons sat in shock at the nurse’s confession. Mia and Zoe both couldn’t bring themselves to fathom such hatred. How could a grown woman be so cruel to young babies? What had they done to her? But soon enough, they relinquished any resentment towards her. Who could hate such a hatred-filled woman? She was already so despicable, she really didn’t need anyone else reminding her of that. Moreover, she had to live in her mind all on her own, and now thanks to Michael and his team, she would have to do it in prison, and for a long time.
The news hit the media like nothing before. Mia and Zoe were at the forefront, with journalists swiftly telling how their story had jump-started such an important investigation. The girls hated the attention and shied away at any opportunity, only for their mother to remind them of all the good they had done. She also reminded them that nothing was going to change the fact that they were family.
If anything, this awful situation taught them that family transcends blood relation and is, in fact, so much more than that. Regardless of what the DNA results showed, Mia and Zoe would always be sisters, and their parents their guardians. It had been that way for so long, so why would they change it? It did help, of course, that they weren’t minors, so legally they could pursue their lost family members and get to know them better. They were ultimately making their family much bigger, not smaller.
The girls thanked Michael and Dr. Pon for everything they had done for them. They had had a gut feeling, one that everyone was telling them to ignore. And in the end, thanks to these two men, they were able to see just how accurate their intuition was. They had not only solved the mystery in their own family but also righted an injustice that had gone on for far too long.
