By Emmanuel Fashakin
This interesting edition of “Tales my patients told me” was written in July 2015. At 34 years of age, Christina has been married only once, yet she has had FOUR last names in her lifetime. When Christina was born, Carmen, her mom had no doubt about who her father was. Even though she was born under Mr. Rodriguez’s roof, Christina’s mother knew that the baby belonged to her former boyfriend, Mr. Garcia.
Carmen had been a long-time girlfriend of Mr. Garcia, and they were planning to get married — until Mr. Rodriguez got into the picture. Soon Carmen decided that she would probably have a better future being married to Mr. Rodriguez, who had never been married, than Mr. Garcia, a divorced father of two children. She dumped Mr. Garcia and moved in with Mr. Rodriguez.
Two weeks after dumping Mr. Garcia, Carmen discovered she had missed her period. She had been intimate with both Mr. Rodriguez and Mr. Garcia after her last menstrual period, and she was confused as to who the baby’s father was. Mr. Rodriguez was ecstatic about the prospects of being a father, and he gladly accepted the baby as his own. They soon got married as they awaited the birth of the baby, the first for both of them. But any nagging doubts in Carmen’s mind regarding the paternity of Christina vanished the moment the nurses cleaned the blood off Christina’s body, and they unwrapped the bundle of joy.
The clincher had nothing to do with the looks or features of the baby — the clue was in the hands. Mr. Garcia and his two children from an earlier marriage both have vestiges of extra digits in their hands — all three of them. Polydactyly is the medical term, and it is hereditary, with variable penetrance: children born to a person with polydactyly may or may not have the extra digits, but if they do, it is presumptive evidence that the biological father is the guy with the extra fingers. Christina came into the world announcing who her father was, because dangling from the inner side of both hands, besides the little fingers, were tiny extra digits.
Carmen was convinced that her baby’s father was Mr. Garcia. So she called Mr. Garcia with the happy news. “Ok, I did not marry you. I dumped you for Mr. Rodriguez. I missed my period after I left you, never got it back. I was confused about the pregnancy because I also had intimacy with my husband, Mr. Rodriguez. Now the baby is born. She looks just like you. Even the hands look like yours. This is your baby, Garcia.” Carmen instructed the hospital registry to put the name Christina Garcia on the birth certificate.
The next day, Carmen’s husband, Mr. Rodriguez came to see his wife and new baby. It was no surprise that when Mr. Rodriguez came to see his baby girl, there was a little bit of confusion. There was no Christina Rodriguez in the nursery, but Christina Garcia — because Carmen had told the hospital that the baby belonged to Mr. Garcia, and not Mr. Rodriguez.
What followed was a grand firestorm from Mr. Rodriguez, threatening court action, and if that fails, violence, and even murder, if they don’t give him “his” baby. Carmen weathered the storm for one week, after which she gave in, and had the baby’s name changed to Christina Rodriguez. She sent a message to Mr. Garcia to stay away from her family, that her earlier message was a mistake because the baby belonged to Mr. Rodriguez, and not him. That, everybody hoped, should have been the end of the matter, but it wasn’t.
When Christina turned five, the home broke down irretrievably and Carmen changed her last name, and Christina’s, to her maiden name —Perez. She felt that she had no obligation to keep Christina’s last name as Rodriguez when she had serious doubts that Mr. Rodriguez was the natural father anyway.
Thus, the lady who made her way from her native country of Ecuador to the United States in 2003 was Christina Perez, formerly Christina Rodriguez, also formerly known as Christina Garcia for one week after her birth.
In 2010, Christina got married to Mr. Torres, and she changed her name once again to her new marital name, Mrs. Christina Torres. Torres became her fourth last name, even though she had been married only once. It was this Mrs. Torres who burst into my Elmont office in May 2015, yelling at the top of her lungs: “Doctor, I have found my Daddy, I have found my Daddy!”
I had thought that maybe her father had Alzheimer’s Dementia, and had wandered away, and was then found, but, after asking her whether her father had got lost, she told me her tale.
Christina had always been confused about who her real father was. Her auntie, the mom’s junior sister, had always whispered in her ears that her dad, Mr. Rodriguez, was not her real daddy, but one Mr. Garcia, whom she had never met. Two months earlier, in March 2015, her auntie called her from Ecuador: Mr. Garcia, her suspected real father, was visiting New York City, and she wanted to know whether Christina would like to meet him. Two days later, as Christina stepped into the lobby of a downtown hotel in Manhattan, New York City, she had no doubt whom she was staring at.
The resemblance was amazing, and there were those shriveled remnants of where the pieces of extra digits had been dangling from both their hands. Within a week, DNA tests had confirmed what they both knew, confirming that Mr. Garcia produced half of her genes.
I am happy for Christina, that she now finally knows who her real daddy is, but DNA is now unearthing so many hidden secrets which were long deemed to be buried, and I don’t know whether that is good or bad.
Emmanuel O. Fashakin, M.D., FMCS(Nig), FWACS, FRCS(Ed), FAAFP, Esq.
Attorney at Law & Medical Director,
Abbydek Family Medical Practice, P.C.
Web address: http://www.abbydek.com
Cell phone: +1-347-217-6175
“Primum non nocere”
