It's the night of December tenth, twenty twenty, and Jared Ackron has just been told by his wife Christy that their two twins, Hannah and Lyle, have died.

The two begin their forty five minute drive home.

Here's Jared again.

She's still sobbing, hysterical and saying she wanted to kill herself.

I had to put on the child's safety lock because she was trying to throw herself out the door onto the highway.

To be perfectly honest, I wasn't really thinking about her at all.

I mean, then when are jumping out of my car?

But all I really cared about were those kids and what happened to them.

I needed to hear it, yes, I didn't want to think it anymore.

I needed confirmation that, hey, the kids are gone.

They died of heart lung problems.

And at this point I'm like, okay.

It probably took a half hour ride home for her to actually tell me how they passed and things like that.

And after she said, I distinctly remember saying okay, and that was the last thing I said.

The rest of the right home, we sat in silence, her sobbing.

I was more angry, and I guess asking why did this happen?

As Jared pulled the pieces together, something's made sense.

I think I was more angry at her for no, there was no update of like, where was the downturn me?

But other things still.

Don't They just don't kill over.

I'm sorry.

There was a gradual Hey, something happened, the fluids still building it up, and her lungs and if you're telling me they died from fluid and the lungs, why did they take the tubes out of them?

I don't think I wanted to face the reality that I was a dad in the morning and now I'm not.

Now I know in a couple of days, I have to bury my kids.

That was what.

I couldn't get that through my mind.

It just that kind of broke I was feeling.

And that was only the beginning.

I'm Trishia la Fotch.

I'm a writer, director, actor, and federal criminal defense attorney.

I'm going to tell you a story that's all too real about love lies and the lengths people will go to for attention.

It's a story that will leave you questioning everything you thought you knew about truth, about reality, and about what happens when the two collide in the most unimaginable way.

From audio up and just sweet press productions, this is the unborn.

What happened that day in the hospital?

How did Jared and Christie's twins die?

Let's replay the delivery.

What we know for certain is that Jared dropped Christy off at the hospital somewhere between two am and two ten am.

He received his first text from her at two seventeen am.

She texts me, Hey, I'm getting into my gown that they're going to do an ultrasound to make sure everything's okay.

But they put the heart monitor ultrasound on they couldn't find a heartbeat, okay, So she said, hey, I'm going into a mergency c section.

I will send you pictures and stuff when I'm done.

The next text that immediately follows is a picture of one baby, an infant baby boy, hooked up to tubes.

Jared texts what happened, but Christy doesn't answer him in words, rather sends a photo of two babies, still hooked up to tubes and in separate beds, along with the caps and she wanted him to post.

She told me, hey, put him online.

He doesn't post that picture.

They speak about it on the phone.

I told her, I don't feel comfortable with the whole world looking at our babies hooked up to a bunch of tubes.

Doesn't seem right.

Frankly, I thought a little bit leird that here she is giving an emergency c section, but she's worried about Facebook posts and what her babies look like on the internet.

Christie sends a third picture, two babies, no tubes now.

The little girl is wearing a pink bow and the little boy is wearing a blue skull cap.

They're side by side in the same bascinet.

And in that bacinet is the placard Jared made to display their names and the date of their births.

That's the picture Jared posts.

After what felt like the longest pregnancy in all the land and the biggest marathon of our lives.

We are so unbelievably excited and proud to finally introduce our beauty, full, healthy twins, Hannah and Lyle.

Lyle born at three point fifty six am five pounds two ounces, nineteen and a half inches.

Hannah born at four oh eight am five pounds fourteen ounces, twenty and one fourth inches.

Sometime between seven thirty two am when Jared makes the Facebook post and nine forty eight am, Jared texts Christy, what room number are you in?

I tried to send her flyers.

They're like, yeah, we don't have a patient named Christy.

I'm like, what do you mean, here's her room number?

I had a room number.

They're like, we don't have a patient name that.

I'm like, well, okay.

Then I call her.

I'm like, hey, just so you know, I tried to send you some flyers.

She goes, what do you mean you tried to call her?

Because I was like, what's your room number?

So your grandma wants to send you flyers?

She goes, don't know, no one's sending me flowers.

It was it was like a shit about sending flowers.

Now Jared is completely confused.

He had a room number, Why didn't the flowers get through?

Why is the hospital telling him that they don't have his wife listed as a patient, and why is she angry about her husband and her grandmother wanting to send her flowers.

At nine am, Christie techs again.

Call me when you wake up from your snooze.

I love you.

Did you make it out and know where you're headed.

What else from Target?

So I can place an order.

They have a bistle sweeper like we had for eighty Do you want that?

She then sends Jared a copy of what she ordered at Target towels, bath towels, shower curtain, shower rod, to which Jared responds.

Looks good, babe.

What he didn't realize at the time was that there was nothing at all for newborn babees.

It was just like stuff she wanted for the kitchen, in the bathroom, in a new sweeper.

You know, It's like she won the Prices Riot or something.

I mean, it wasn't a big order or nothing, But in hindsight, wouldn't you want a few things for your newborn baby?

But who knows?

None of it made no sense.

Christi texts Jared that she spoke to her grandmother and that her phone and I quote has not stopped ringing with people calling all day.

The next message from Christy to Jared is December tenth, at two thirty nine pm.

I think it's crappy that when I was talking to you thirty minutes ago, he lost me and never called back.

I'm having a super hard time and you just don't even care.

The next text is at six forty seven pm.

That's four hours later, and this is where it gets real.

This is after Christy has called Jared and told him to come pick her up immediately.

Christy first texted Jared at two seventeen AM, and it is now six forty seven pm, which means Christy has been in the hospital for sixteen and a half hours.

Are you on your way?

What's going on?

I will tell you when you get here.

I can't drive this far without.

Knowing who is Karen Ewing?

I need you to come get me.

Please, I'm coming, but you need to call me.

Chris, Please call me.

I'm checking out.

This is serious and we will talk in person.

Where do I go emergency?

No, hospital side text when you are ten minutes out?

Will I be coming in?

No, I'll be coming out with people pulling the roundabout.

Okay, I will Are you okay?

Yes?

Are the kids?

No?

We will talk when you get here.

My mind was reeling at that point.

I didn't know what to think, so I did as I was told.

I hopped in my car and went and got her.

Drove back forty five minutes to the hospital, not knowing what the hell was going on or what I was getting myself into.

But boy was it going to be a problem when I got there.

You can guarantee that I would honestly just say it was a roller coaster up and down and then a crash and burn at the end.

Christy moved away from Avella in her teens, and she returned years later.

Jared recounts how they reconnected.

So we, uh, we met at the fan there and I actually ended up sliding her DMS on Facebook.

I won't lie about it.

What did you say?

What did I say?

It was, Hey, your post have been cracking me up lately.

I think I even got an lol back, but I think that was about it.

Then probably a day later, she had said, I want you to add me on Why don't you text me and give me your number?

That's where that started.

This is Jared and Molly talking about the first night the two acts actually hung out after.

We had reconnected at the fair.

Then it was Mollie's birthday at the same time as we have our little get together after our Mollie.

Mollie is actually my girl best friend.

She was her twenty first birthday, so it was a good time.

It was my birthday and we're at the bar and I'm sorry, my chickens are here.

We're at the bar for my birthday.

And he had recently just broke up with his ex girlfriend.

And I was like, bring this girl to the bar.

It'll be fun, Like, just bring her.

So she came.

I don't I wouldn't say.

I remember meeting her for the first time.

I was a little bit intoxicated.

Molly ends up taking my phone and text my now wife, Hey, come down here.

We're having a good time.

Yeah.

They were on the phone or they were texting, and I had told her him to call her, and then I took the phone and went outside and was like, hey, you should come down.

We're all just having a good time.

And she agreed to it because she was at the fair, which is only ten minutes away.

So she ends up actually showing up, which I didn't think anything of it.

I'm like, okay, and we kind of hit it off from there and we ended up going on a few dates and kind of one thing led to another.

Jared and Christy have a very fast romance.

She's immediately hanging out with his family and friends and really becoming close to his siblings who were just teenagers at the time.

But then two things happened.

On March thirteenth, twenty twenty, the coronavirus hits the United States.

We all remember where we were.

I was in Atlanta on the set of the medical drama The Resident.

In the morning, everyone was elbow bumping each other and making light of the confusing situation.

By the end of the day, the entire show was shut down for the season.

For Jared and Christy, after less than three months of dating, they found out they were pregnant in early April twenty twenty, are two weeks after the stay at home orders were issued.

We actually had a little get together, had some my parents over and uncle and stuff like.

We're all live within five minutes of each other, so it's not like they're coming from right all over your place, so we get together pretty often.

I think it was because I finished redoing the hardwood floors, finished putting them in, and we get together and do these kind of things, say hey, we finished a project, because most they'll come over and help me do them.

So my mom and my wife were in the back room there.

Christy was drinking.

She started throwing up and close to the end of it.

That's Jenny, Christie's former best friend and at the time, her closest confidant.

She recounts that evening, me.

And Jared's mom were sitting there saying, owede, what's going on?

Maybe she go to the hospital.

And then Christy comes out and Jared's mom says, maybe your pregnant.

And I was making the joke and I said, yeah.

I was twins.

I'm out entertaining everyone else listening to it on the radio in the garage, and she comes out and says, hey, maybe we should go to the hospital.

I'm having some headaches.

And my mom walks in after and she goes That's how I found out I was pregnant.

Was having a headaches, and I was sore.

I didn't think nothing.

I'm like, here, that's nothing, there's no way.

Still, Jared left the gathering with Christy and headed towards the hospital.

I'd have to drop a property emergency room because of COVID.

It was pandemic.

Even if you were negative on your test.

There were no visitors because this was what at first hit.

It was a big fiasco up there.

So I'm sitting there and I'm like, okay, maybe they're just giving her fluid.

Maybe she's dehydrated.

We had been to the hospital before this for this these headaches.

Now this will end up being a recurring theme.

Because of COVID.

Jar is completely isolated from any firsthand information about what is going on in Christy's pregnancy.

I get a call.

It's way early in the morning, it's got to be three o'clock.

She's bawling.

I'm like, oh no, what's going on.

Then at this point, I'm still out of it.

I don't know what to think.

You're gonna hate me.

I'm pregnant.

I'm like, there's no way, I'm freaking out.

For context, at the time, Christy was using an IUD, and they use additional contraceptive protection.

I'm like, what are we gonna do?

And I'll never see you again, I'll never talk to you again, goodbye.

I'm like, wait a minute here.

Up until now, Jared had not seen this side of Christy that exhibited severe mood swings, and he chalked it up to stress, as well as his initial not so great reaction to our announcement.

You pick her up, I go, what are you doing?

She goes, well, I'm going to start looking for new apartments to get away from you.

I'm like, okay, we're going to be like this.

I wake up the next morning, it's like nothing happened.

It's okay, let's get together and go tell everyone.

I'm like, what I just I can't count.

I can't get that across my head.

Is how do you go from one extreme that don't ever talk to me again?

We gotta go talk one and of course got to put it on Facebook, and that stuff's just terrible.

It's just everything she wants to do is on Facebook.

Jared was, by his own admission, freaking out, but his parents, on the other hand, they were very supportive, and their support helped him into ciding his next step.

My wife and I got married because she got pregnant, So it wasn't you don't want it to happen that way, but that's what happens.

That you deal with it, that's all.

I was happy for him.

My wife was a static.

It was probably only three months, so it was unexpected, to say the least, and I don't know, it was, oh man, what do I do?

Do I do the right thing and propose to her, and.

I was okay with it.

Be just my background.

I got pregnant when I was young.

I look at it differently.

I think it's a blessing.

So Jared decided he was going to propose.

Houghly, she says, yes.

Jara decided to do the right thing, as upon his upbringing and his moral compass.

There was no other decision to be made.

After all, he was in love, and he always felt he was destined to be a father, and he had his parents support.

Now he just had to get a little help from his friends to make the proposal go off without a hitch.

My cousin is a photographer.

I'm like, hey, I know I told you I detail your car because I detail cars on the side too.

So I tell my cousin, hey, bring your car over.

If my wife says anything, tell her, hey, you brought your car over to detail, and then go hide was getting her dressed up?

Man, how am I going to pull this one?

I actually call my buddy whose wife was pregnant.

Jared is referring to Sarah, who is already carrying suspicions about Christy's pregnancy.

She decides to hop Jared out.

I'm like, hey, can you call Christy and tell her?

Hey, let's go to this movie, so I had to bring other people in because if I say it, she knows I'm not going to movies.

So Sarah is trying to get Christy dressed up while Jared's cousin is hiding so he can take a picture of Christy hopefully saying yes.

But that's not all, cousin.

I'm like, hey, get your camera ready and all this stuff.

Go get to cow and my dog.

Jared's dog is Ada, named after Ada Shelby from the Netflix show Peaky Blinders.

I get Ada in this cow out.

I can't even remember what the cale's name is now, just a little calf.

It was a bottle baby.

Actually it was Eve.

She was born on Christmas Eve.

Get the cow out mess and she walks out of the house and she's like laughing at me, what are you doing?

But I'm like, hey, will you marry me?

Christy said yes, and in typical fashion, Jared's cousin's photo of Jared Christy, their dog Ada, and his cow Eve, along with an announcement of their engagement, is immediately posted on Facebook.

I don't even think I got to tell my mom and dad as she said yes before it was on Facebook.

Christie's pregnancy immediately went on Facebook.

Now her engagement to Jared, and just like the pregnancy, Christie's internet circle knows the good news even before Jared has a chance to tell the closest to him.

And even though the constant posting got on his nerves.

He was in love, about to get married and have a family.

Was that my parents' farm?

Out of the eight hundred residents that live in Jared and Christie's hometown, two hundred and eighty attended the celebration.

It was pretty big, it was beautiful.

It was a dream.

That's Jenny again.

It was a dream learning.

It was everything anyone could ask for.

I know Jared, his mom and family and friends worked so hard.

Jared was also very proud of their wedding, albeit for different reasons.

We actually ran out of beer twice.

We had to send the people to the beer store.

It was a good wedding.

Everyone had a good time and no one left trash everywhere.

That was a nice part.

Jared was particularly impressed with how their guests conducted themselves on the property.

Only picked up one beer can out of the field, and with all that, I'm like, wow, that's some pretty good guests there.

When Jared and Christy met, he had just spent every single dollar he had to purchase his childhood home.

It had fallen into disrepair, so he was slowly doing a total remodel with his own two hands.

The best time in my life.

I got to bomb a childhood home.

And when Christy moved in, it was a construction zone.

He wasn't expecting to be a husband or a father, But now, with Christy almost four months pregnant, Jared begins the mad dad to complete the remodel before his kids are born.

None of the bedrooms were done.

They were sleeping together in his bed in the kitchen while he finished rebuilding the foundation.

It's a young graduate full of debt, just bought a house.

No care in the world.

I had a job.

I had a good job.

It was made all my payments and had money left over.

My best friends were all around.

Luckily Jared was a young man who could handle a lot.

Because a lot more was coming.

The doctor calls her.

I'm sitting there.

This is it's late at night.

I don't know why they called.

It was probably seven point thirty.

I had just come inside because the shower sat down, was eating and I remember I was eating Progi Carole.

I didn't even hear the doctor.

She gives, thank you very much.

She gets I'm having we're having twins.

I spit my mash potatoes all over my brand new carpet.

Here comes a dog one hundred mile an hour.

I'm like, well, just added to the list.

But I was excited too, because at that time I didn't know what it felt like.

Jared was open, trusting, loving, reliable, possibly to a fault.

Twins on the way, a house nearly finished for his coming family.

Sadly, it was a family that was never meant to be.

Jared's drive home from the hospital is even worse than his terrifying drive there.

She basically told me, hey, still suicidal.

I don't want to live.

I feel like I've failed as a mother.

There's a million things running through my mind.

How do I talk about all this?

I had a couple different thoughts of how I could keep her safe.

He's not ready to call his parents and tell them they're not grandparents, so he cycles the options over and over in his head, trying to figure out how to handle his extremely emotional wife, who he also loves dearly.

All on his own.

At this point in the ride, I'm like kind of protective mode, because do I really need to lose three people in my life in a six hour period?

So I'm starting to go through it.

And that's when Jared made a decision.

What I ended up with Sidden was to not leave her alone and not leave her with a vehicle.

I'll just have someone there, Grandma, not on my family, because I don't know what she's going to do, so I would either have her grandmother, her cousin, her best friend.

The next morning, Jared finally decides to call his dad.

I said, hey, can you cut with I'm still a disaster.

I'm crying, so we can't talk.

I'm like, hey, can you come to this house?

He goes, yeah, what's wrong?

I like, you just see if mom can come to And at that point he know something's wrong.

So actually my mom shut up.

First she knew what Christy had told me was the heart and lung problems, and my mom just lost it.

I've never seen my mom show any type of emotion like that.

I mean, it was like, now I have to worry about my mom or too.

Oh.

I just devastated.

I just couldn't.

I couldn't understand.

I couldn't wrap my head around it.

Even though Jared was still rightfully extremely distraught, the arrival of his family members forced him to stay strong.

At this point, I'm trying to beat the rock, standing still and have all these people lean on me, and where all I want to do is crumble down.

Then my dad shows up and he already knew.

My mind immediately goes to questions about different things that kind of didn't make sense to me, but you don't say them out loud, because if you're wrong and say something like that, then you're really a jerk.

She sent pictures of the babies and those are healthy babies.

Then we don't hear anything for a whole day, and the next.

Morning, much like Sarah, Jared's father, David was now very suspicious of what was going on, and just like Sarah, he didn't say anything.

That's when we were told and you know, I just you don't say anything.

But it didn't add up because at that moment, you're still thinking that something bad happened, but there was there was no reason why what happened.

You know, after a couple of.

Hours of just standing around and you know, trying to console.

Everybody then only when wanted to b to Barry's when things started getting there, Donah weird and we couldn't get them back.

She's saying that she didn't want another bizarre turn in Chrissy's behavior.

She didn't want the remains of her children, but she didn't have the final word on the matter.

The Akron family torn apart by the news, but even in the haze of grief, Jared's mom, Kathy told him what needed to be done next.

She told him he needed to call the hospital to make arrangements for two things.

First, she wanted to be given access to the children.

She wanted to hold them in her arms and say goodbye.

And secondly, she wanted Jared and Christy to begin the process of having the children buried.

At that point, she was all for, Hey, you need to get those kids back.

I'm like, you're right, we do need to give them a barret call the hospital and they put me into the mark.

I'm like, hey, I need to talk to the mark and they're like, yeah, let me take your name and number and we'll call you back because they don't want you to leave in a voicemailer.

That's what they told me, so I leave a voicemail.

A couple hours goes by, I'm like, I didn't get anything back.

I'm gonna call him again.

Prior to this moment, Christy was unaware that Jared had been trying to get in contact with the hospital.

He wasn't trying to hide it.

She was inside with her friends and family, and he was outside making the calls with his mom and dad.

And when she finds out he's trying to reach the hospital, she goes ballistic.

This time, Christy catches me calling and at this point she gets up off the couch basically runs across the yard and this one hundred and fifty yards from the house.

Christy tells Jared that he cannot retrieve their children because she signed her rights away to them.

She also never put Jared's name on the birth certificate, so even if he gets through to the hospital, they won't speak to him because legally he's not their father.

The only explanation she will provide as to why she signed the rights away is because once they were pronounced dead, she never wanted to see them again.

But why didn't she put Jared's name on the birth certificate?

Jared was her husband, and their father, and again, the only reason he was not there by her side when she gave birth was because he was effectively locked out and completely isolated due to her testing positive for COVID.

She goes, I signed away there gone, you don't have any right to them.

I'm like, that's fucking bullshit.

Those kids are half mine.

You don't have the fucking right to say you don't have a say in that.

None of this made sense to Jared or to his parents, And it's a pivotal moment in our story because it drastically altered Jared's willingness to play nice with her.

That was my breaking point of you know what I mean.

And I'd like to think I'm a calm first and most of the time, this just it put me over the edge.

She said she had a sea section, she should be cut, she should still be in the hospital.

Like things like that are starting to bother me, Like I'm looking up sea section.

People don't just stand up check theirselves out of hospital after sea section.

Yeah, they also don't go running out of the house screaming that they signed their rights away to two dead babies after the fight on the lawn.

Believing her point was made.

Christy went back into the house, but Jared and his family were far from finish with the matter.

They needed a closure.

Jared did not accept that he could not see and hold his children, that he could not bury them.

If that's how Christy felt, fine, but he had no intention of going along with her wishes.

And I don't blame him.

As hard as it was to see her so distraught, they were his babies too, and his desire to see them and to give them a proper burial mattered.

Even if it didn't matter to Christy my mom.

She just wanted to hold them, and I agree, give me my time.

I don't care if you're there, don't come.

I will bury them where I want to.

You don't have to be a part of it.

It had come to a breaking point and Jared needed time to think.

I got in the car and left.

After that, Okay, I left her there.

I just drove.

I drove for probably six hours.

I just stop and get fuel.

That's how long I drove.

The whole time Jared is driving, he's sporadically pulling over and calling the hospital.

Thank you for calling your pmc McGee Women's Hospital.

Each time he's getting transferred to the morgue.

Got be connected to the morgue.

Please sure.

When he would get in touch with the Morgue, they'd say they'd get back to him.

They didn't.

You have reached McGee Women's Hospital Autopsy Pathology our normal.

Working hours after his dead end with the Morgue, Jared began calling hospital administration, a painful cycle of being placed on hold, transferred again, hung up on back, only to leave voicemail.

After voicemail, Tell my mom and dad.

I text him, Hey, here's what I'm doing.

I don't know where I'm going.

I'm not going to do anything stupid, nothing like that.

Just give me some time.

And still, after hours and hours of calling, no answer.

I drove for hours, ended up showing back up at my parents.

I'm sitting there talking to my dad and he goes, something's not adding up here.

I said, yeah, and he put this together all kinds of things.

He goes, it's not adding up and he brings it back to the animals.

If you get an animal to eat and poop, you're pretty good.

Most of the time, nothing's wrong.

And if you don't have any breathing problems throughout the day, they don't just up and die.

But as much as Jared was beginning to suspect something was up, nothing could prepare him for what happened next.

As he continues to speak with his father trying to make sense of it, he gets a call from an unknown number, and Jared picked up.

But I get a call from this number.

She goes, Hi, I'm I'm the AOC.

I'm like, I don't what does that mean?

She gets, oh, I'm the head of hospital.

She goes, I can tell you certain things, but because of HIPPA, I can't tell you everything.

I go, look, I'm just trying to find out how I can get my kids.

Jared keeps insisting with the hospital administrator that regardless of HIPPA, he has the rights to his children's remains.

She says, you're right, as a father, you do have fifty percent rights to your children.

But there's no easy way to tell you this.

There were no twins born yesterday, and there were no twins that died yesterday.

So your wife was never pregnant.

No next time.

On the unborn.

Pseudocysis, this is where someone believes they're pregnant and in fact they have physiologic changes that would accompany the normal signs of pregnancy.

They can get abdominal bloating, they can have fatigue, they can have nipple discharge, they have the sense that there are fetal movements.

To the casual observer, they appear pregnant, they have extended abdomen like they're carrying a baby.

They truly believe that they're pregnant, and it can actually be very difficult for them even when they're confronted with the medical evidence that shows that they're actually not pregnant.

The Unborn is a production of iHeart Podcasts, Audio Up and jess Wee Press Productions.

Created by Trishala Fotch and Frank Rodriguez.

Mal produced by Alvin Cohen and Rachel Foley.

Executive produced by Jimmy Jellinek, David Thwaites and Jared gustav Edited by Gerard Bauer and Preston Dawson.

Sound design and mixing by Jeremiah Zimmerman.