Family Search

I consider myself a fairly normal guy; average height and weight, average looks (maybe slightly better than average), average intelligence, and average income. There are two things about me that clearly aren't average; 1) I married "up" in some ways since my wife Janice is extraordinarily good looking, and 2) I have an obsession. My obsession is "somewhat" with Janice, but there is another area that is way beyond "somewhat." The way beyond "somewhat" obsession? I want to find my birth family.

My adoptive parents were straight with me about most things, including telling me when I was five that I was adopted. The way they put it was "Most people have to take and care for any child that is born to them. We were lucky to get to pick who our child was, and it was you Ryan; you're special." Sweet, huh.

The one thing that they were not straight with me about was who my birth family was. When I became a teenager I started being interested in finding out who they were – I wasn't necessarily interested in re-connecting with them, at least not at first. I just had this burning desire to know who they were. My adoptive parents were thoroughly unhelpful, and acted hurt if I ever brought the subject up. I was their only child, and they were committed to me. I never had any intention of treating them any differently if I found my birth family, I just wanted to know.

The only information I ever found out about my birth family was because of a tragedy. When I was eighteen my adoptive parents got into a car wreck. My father was killed instantly. My mother hung on for about ten days, fluctuating between lucid and confused. I think that about three days before she died she realized that she was going to. After she and I exchanged our words of love for each other she made sure that the nurse was out of the room and motioned to me to sit in a chair directly next to her head. While the tubes sticking out of her made her hard to understand, I didn't miss a word.

"Ryan, I know that you've had an interest in finding your birth family. For a while it hurt me, but I came to realize that it was only natural and didn't detract from your love for me and Dad."

I smiled at her and kissed her hand, avoiding the IV needle.

"I do know some things about them and I want to tell you now in case I don't make it."

"You'll make it Mom..." I started to say, but she hushed me up.

"Your birth mother had three other kids and was poor and her husband had recently left her – while she was pregnant with you – and she had to put you up for adoption or she never would have been able to make it. I could tell that it was a really hard decision for her, the one time that we met."

Mom teared up a little, and I wiped her eyes. She smiled and continued.

"You have a brother a year older than you are, and two sisters about three and five years older than you are. I remember that your mother's name was 'Doris,' I think, and the oldest girl's name was 'Samantha' or something like that, but I don't remember anything else; oh, except for the fact that they were from the same metropolitan area that we live in, although I got the impression that they lived about as far away as from us as possible while still being in the area. I'm sorry, but that's all that I know – I hope that you can find them."

While I was grateful for any shred of information, what she told me wasn't too helpful. There were well over a million people in our metropolitan area, they may have moved to find a cheaper place to live, and Mom may not even have remembered Doris' name properly – and there had to be thousands of women with the name Doris. But I was grateful and told Mom so – and then changed the subject.

***************

I met Janice as I was finishing up my associate's degree in biology at the local community college about two years after my parents' deaths. While my parents weren't wealthy, they owned their house (which I inherited) free and clear, and left me enough money so that I could go to school to get my associate's degree without having to also work full time. I didn't think that I was University material, but realized that I needed more than a High School degree to qualify for what I wanted to be – a lab technician. Janice worked as a waitress in a local restaurant and was a year older than I was.

The details of how Janice and I got together and all of our physical features aren't important. Maybe what was important that I didn't focus on was that Janice probably has below average intelligence, and has a tendency to latch onto a goal and do anything or everything to achieve it regardless of the morality or consequences. I was so blown away that someone who looked like her could be interested in me that I glossed over those concerns.

Plus the sex with Janice was – to use an overworked but applicable word – awesome! She loved oral, loved fucking doggy while I fingered her puckerhole, and was definitely multi-orgasmic. The little squeaky sounds that she made when climaxing were always enough to get me to shoot massive wads of cum into her snug vagina.

Janice and I were married in a simple ceremony when she was twenty two and I was twenty one. The week that I graduated from community college I got a job at a local hospital lab assisting physicians in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases by performing tests on tissue, blood and other body fluids. She didn't like waitressing so she switched to retail sales (a sales clerk at a local department store) which she liked better, even though it paid about $1,500 less a year. Since we owned the house and had no debt, and since my pay as a lab technician was more than a living wage, that wasn't an issue.

While I can't say that Janice encouraged my continuing search for my birth family, she didn't discourage it either, and didn't object when I spent money on the search. I probably spent about $5,000 over the first five years of our marriage looking for them, and also devoted at least about ten hours a week to the search – although I was far from efficient. I had a dozen promising leads that just never panned out, but I didn't get discouraged. I had a feeling that at some point serendipity would strike and I would eventually succeed.

While my time commitment didn't change, my ability and willingness to spend money on my search ceased when Janice got pregnant with our daughter Macy, who was born almost five years to the day after Janice and I had wed.

Janice started to really get the motherhood bug after we had been married about three and a half years. On our fourth year anniversary she went off birth control, and although she wasn't much of a reader, read all sorts of non-scholarly works (mostly magazines and cheap books) about how to get pregnant and motherhood. Janice was more than a little squirrely in the time leading up to her pregnancy, and while she was pregnant. I was certain that that was due to the fact that after she went off birth control and we had ourselves tested – easy to do in my lab – that while she was fertile I had a very low sperm count so conception could take some time and effort, and she desperately wanted a child; it was one of her "goals" that she would do anything to achieve.

Fortunately, conception did not take as long as we feared – in my mind the fear contributed to her squirreliness – since she found out that she was pregnant a little more than three months after she went off birth control. Despite her squirreliness during this time it was fun for me because she was constantly horny and wanted to fuck every night and two or three times each weekend day, and obviously put her all into it, believing (although there is not any real proof of it) that the more we fucked and the more energetic she was when we did the sooner she would conceive and the healthier the baby would be.

Macy is a real joy. While she had some features that clearly favor me, she looks very much like Janice – beautiful. Plus she is bubbly and kind.

When she was four Macy started preschool. At that point Janice was pregnant with our second child – and again acting squirrely in the lead up to and during pregnancy – and we thought it best to give Janice some free time while socializing Macy and starting her on the path to serious learning. The private preschool that we wanted to enroll Macy in insisted that they have blood type information – as well as other types of medically related information – before Macy started school; so we went to the school as a family one Saturday morning to provide the school with information and look around and be introduced to the teacher and staff.

Since my lab did blood typing all of the time, I had the school nurse draw a little blood from Macy and give it to me for testing. I knew that my blood type was B and during Janice's previous pregnancy her blood had of course been typed and as I recalled it was B too. Allowing me to do the typing would save the school a little money so they were more than willing to cooperate.

*****************

After I dealt with all of the emergencies that arise in a hospital lab over the weekend and on Monday morning, just before quitting time Monday afternoon I finally got to test Macy's blood. It doesn't take long to get the initial results of a blood type test. However, I got the shock of my life – and had to sit down – when her blood type turned up as A.

Why was I shocked?

Because two people with type B cannot have a child with a blood type aside from B or O.

Finally I convinced myself that I must have not remembered Janice's blood type correctly. However I was going to have do find out for sure.

I was too shaken that night to get Janice to give me a blood sample. She asked me several times what was wrong but I just told her that there was a minor problem at work that had hijacked my brain.

Tuesday I tried to put the issue out of my mind at work but when I left for home I brought simple equipment with me to draw some blood from Janice. While I didn't draw blood at the hospital as a regular part of my job, I had done it on a number of special occasions, and certainly knew how to.

After dinner I told Janice that we were doing family blood testing at work for a research project and that I needed a little of hers to contribute. Janice never questioned me about my work – she didn't really understand any of it – and isn't squeamish, so she readily agreed, especially since the amount I needed was small.

Wednesday morning I got into work early and drew some of my blood. I tested all of mine, Janice's and Macy's on the same equipment – twice. There was no doubt that Janice and I were both Bs and Macy an A. Since I saw Macy pop out of Janice's womb I knew that she was the mother – therefore either I wasn't Macy's biological father, or she had a one in a million mutation.

It was hard to work the rest of the day, but I somehow managed it. Since the thoughts rolling through my brain were scary I decided that I had to be absolutely sure before I did anything. DNA testing was the only option.

That night I swabbed Macy's cheek, I swabbed mine, and sent them both to a friend of mine at another local lab that did DNA testing, since I didn't do it myself and even though others at my lab were capable of doing some DNA testing I didn't want a co-worker involved. I didn't tell my friend anything except that I wanted to know if the two people had a relationship, and to bill me personally for the testing. I asked him to expedite things. He said that he'd have it in less than a week, how much less depending upon how rushed things were at his lab.

I was on pins and needles the next few days. I never have been good at "acting normally" in abnormal situations, but because of my love for Janice and Macy I was giving Janice the benefit of the doubt for now, and although Janice questioned me several times I did a better job of acting normal in a strange situation than at any previous time in my life. This carried over to sex.

While after the first blood typing my ardor for Janice was suppressed, Janice's libido did not fall during her second pregnancy and she was hot to trot. As part of my acting normal I did fuck her five times before the test results came back, all doggy (not just because that was her favorite position but also because she was almost eight months along and many other positions weren't doable without potentially harming the fetus). I actually enjoyed the hell out of fucking her during this time – while not as emotionally rewarding as before I had the blood type information for a reason that I cannot explain (and don't want to go to a shrink to find out) it was slightly more physically rewarding than normal.

*************

About 9:15 on a Thursday morning my friend from the DNA lab called.

"Ryan I have your test results. There is something bizarre about them. Can you find fifteen minutes today to come see me and talk about them?"

"Something bizarre?" I gasped. "What do you mean Jack?"

"I really want to talk to you face to face and do a show and tell," Jack replied.

"OK – can I come over about 11:30 this morning?" I asked.

"Sure – come to the South entrance on Baker Street – you know where we are, don't you?" Jack said and asked.

"Yes I do; see you," I replied in an emotionless voice since my mind was having trouble processing the information.

I should have gone to his lab immediately since my mind was so preoccupied with the mystery surrounding my conversation with Jack. I had to redo two tests because I screwed them up. I finally did get them right about 11:00 and since it was about twenty minutes' drive to Jack's lab, I left then.

I met Jack about 11:25. "What's up?" I begged after a perfunctory handshake.

"Look, Ryan, even though you didn't tell me flat out, I know that these tests have something to do with you, so I wanted to go over the results carefully and make sure that you understand and can ask questions," Jack said encouragingly as he hustled me into a conference room with a display screen, computer, and projector. He didn't beat around the bush.

"What are displayed on the screen are a female's DNA sequence on the left and a male's DNA sequence and alleles on the right. The male is not directly biologically related to the female but there is an indirect biological relationship. Now I'm going to ask you a question that you probably do not want to answer, but if you want the information I'm sure that you do want, you have to answer," Jack sternly said.

I nodded my head, my heart pounding and my mouth dry.

"Is the female Macy and is the male you?" Jack asked.

I either couldn't or didn't want to, or both, answer. I remained mute for at least a minute. Jack stared at me the entire time. He broke the silence by saying "Of course you know that this is confidential and you have to know that I'm a trustworthy person. Tell me."

"Ye...ye...yes, that's...right," I stammered.

"Then I believe that Macy's father is a blood relative of yours – probably a brother," Jack continued.

Apparently Jack caught me when I fainted because my head didn't have any bumps or bruises and I didn't have a concussion when I came to. I was on the floor with a pillow under my head and a female nurse and Jack hovering over me.

"You OK buddy?" Jack said from a position over the nurse.

They helped me up to a chair; Jack got me a bottle of water while the nurse was checking me over some more. When Jack returned with the water with a smile the nurse said "You're OK Ryan. You were only out about a minute; Jack had me on standby."

I thanked her, she left the room, I took a couple of swigs of water, and then Jack said "What just happened is the reason that I wanted to tell you face-to-face."

"I really, really do appreciate it," I responded with a chuckle despite the lack of levity in this situation.

"There's a silver lining," Jack said, "and I'm not being facetious. You have a better chance now of finding your birth family than ever before. All you have to do is have Janice give up his name. And on the downside, you might want to kill your brother when you do meet him instead of hug him."

I nodded my head in agreement. "Amen to that. Here what should have been serendipity is zemblanity!"

"What the hell is 'zemblanity?'" Jack scoffed.

"That's a term coined by William Boyd to be an antonym of serendipity. Effectively it means an unpleasant surprise, or unsurprise, depending upon the particulars," I chortled.

"How in the hell do you know that word?"

"I've been searching for my birth family for more than twelve years and in that time I was praying for serendipity and looking to find out as much about it as I could – and in that research came across the word 'zemblanity.' I was hoping never to experience it," I replied with a shoulder shrug.

"Well that's moot, now, isn't it buddy?" Jack rhetorically asked. "Let me show you all the details and give you copies of the results," he continued.

For the next twenty minutes Jack went over every aspect of the DNA results. While I was generally familiar with DNA from my community college courses and some things that came up at the hospital lab I wasn't anywhere close to an expert. However, after his lucid explanation I understood it as well as I was capable of understanding it.

After giving Jack a check made out to his company for running the tests, when I got ready to leave carrying a manila envelope with several copies of the DNA results in it, Jack asked "Are you sure you can drive?"

"Yeah, no problem," I replied with a light-heartedness I didn't really feel. "Thank you – you've done more to help me find my birth family than anyone else in history; plus you've fucked me up worse too," I replied, the last phrase with an evil chuckle.

"Don't kill the messenger, dude...don't kill the messenger; and good luck," were Jack's last words as he earnestly shook my hand goodbye.

****************

By nature I'm not a violent or vindictive person. I had only two instances in my life when I went berserk and in each situation I, and at least one other person, ended up in the hospital. I also am not normally an especially confrontational person, but in this situation I had to be because there is no way that I could act normally knowing what I now knew. So I called my supervisor on my cellphone, told her that it was an emergency – which it was – and drove home. Macy would not be there, but Janice should be.

When I walked through the door Janice giddily said "Ryan, honey – what a surprise," as she ran up to me with her arms outstretched and a smile on her face.

I held her off. When she saw the dour expression on my face she asked "What's wrong, Hon?"

"You need to sit down on the couch, Janice," I coldly said. I grabbed her arm and not gently, but also not violently, lead her over to the couch and plopped her ass down. Given what had just happened to me I didn't want to take the chance there her almost eight month pregnant self would similarly faint and do significant damage to herself or her fetus (I was no longer sure that it was "our" fetus) if she hit the floor.

There was a scared look on her face when I loomed over her, held her hands and said "I need you to answer my question honestly, and without dwelling on consequences. I just found out today by DNA testing that the Macy's biological father is my brother. What's his name and where does he live or work?"

"Wh...wh...what?" she sobbed.

I repeated what I had just said.

It was lucky that I made her sit on the couch because she collapsed into hysteria. I let go of her hands and she scrunched – as much as an almost eight month pregnant woman can – into the fetal position on the couch and sobbed uncontrollably. It was clear that no matter what I did I wasn't going to get the information that I wanted out of her right then. So I did something I hadn't done since sick days in High School. I turned on mindless daytime TV and sat down and watched it, keeping one eye on Janice.