The Stakeout — Nashville E2

Summary

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What Happened in Nashville

Episode 2: The Stakeout

Host: Melissa Jeltsen
Date: December 3, 2025
Podcast: iHeartPodcasts

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Overview

In this gripping episode, Melissa Jeltsen investigates the chaotic aftermath of the sudden closure of the Center for Reproductive Health (CRH) in Nashville. Through the eyes of patients Mary, Sydney, and Taylor, among others, Melissa unravels how the abrupt shutdown left dozens devastated—cut off from their treatments, finances, records, and, most vitally, their embryos. The episode exposes the human cost of an unregulated fertility industry, chaos among abandoned patients, and a cascade of bureaucratic and personal failures as people scramble for answers and control.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Morning of the Shutdown (02:12 – 04:31)

• Mary's last normal appointment:
  Mary, a veterinary technician undergoing IVF, attends what seems like a typical early-morning appointment at CRH. Everything appears routine.
• Normalcy masks upheaval:
  "At 8am I show up and reception is acting normal...I left like it was just a normal check in. Like it was just normal." – Mary (03:22)
• Sudden disruption:
  By afternoon, Mary receives a call delaying her transfer indefinitely—no clear explanation beyond “short staffing.” The nurse instructs her to continue expensive, side-effect-laden medication (Lupron).

2. Discovery Through the News (04:55 – 07:00)

• Patients left in the dark:
  Mary only learns the clinic is collapsing after a news report airs, featuring Sydney and her husband, Austin. Both women are blindsided; they had no prior warning from the clinic itself.
• Mary’s husband’s reaction:
  "It felt like another lost chance to start a family." – Mary's Husband (06:46)

3. Clinic Stakeout and Patient Panic (07:00 – 14:09)

• Desperate search for answers:
  Mary's husband visits the clinic: doors are open, no staff present, phones ringing unanswered. "It feels like a ghost town..." – Melissa (07:28)
• Sydney's ad hoc support:
  Sydney creates a Facebook group for affected families:
  "I think I'm gonna make a Facebook page for all the families that are going through this, because that way we can all just kind of have each other." – Sydney (09:36)
• Online chaos:
  Patients trade scraps of info and frantic messages as calls and emails go unanswered.
• Different patients, different stakes:
  Introduction to Taylor Turner, who, after surviving a brain tumor, has only one viable embryo—her only shot at a biological child.
  “We have a highly graded boy embryo that we lovingly call 5aa. So we always refer to him as that.” – Taylor Turner (12:19)

4. Emotional and Financial Toll (14:09 – 23:42)

• No control, only fear:
  Patients feel trapped, powerless, and afraid for their chances to have families.
  "I truly felt like I couldn't even figure out what was going on." – Sydney (14:38)
• Mary's journey through infertility:
  Mary traces her long, expensive ordeal—failed IUIs, miscarriages, expensive IVF not covered by insurance, and finally, donor eggs.
  “I'm just the couple that has unexplained infertility, which is 25% of couples with infertility.” – Mary (16:54)
• Financial strain:
  “We, of course, were just running out of money. I'm pretty sure our credit cards had plenty on them.” – Mary (18:37)
• Hope dwindles:
  Mary suffers a chemical pregnancy after her first embryo transfer, leading to counseling and support groups before attempting again with donor eggs—bought using a Christmas bonus.

5. The Clinic Stakeout—Race for Medical Records (23:42 – 31:54)

• Patients organize and converge:
  Alerted by a Facebook post that Dr. Vasquez is in the office, Mary and others show up in person. Doors are locked, but patients linger, desperate for contact or records.
• Emotional confrontation:
  Another patient arrives, having just handed over $30,000 for treatment, unaware of the closure. “I felt like I had just, like, crushed a woman's soul.” – Mary's Husband (26:27)
• Ovation nurses arrive:
  Nurses from an outside lab try to locate and retrieve medical records, but the clinic is hopelessly disorganized: “Half of it's in a paper form, half of it, it's on digital, half of it's not uploaded.” – Ovation Nurse (28:22)
• Attorney Dixie aids the patients:
  Dr. Vasquez’s attorney, Dixie, is empathetic and helps Mary gain access, eventually producing a massive dump of documents.
  “Do you have everything?” she asks. “Yes, I do. And that was it. I walked out of there.” – Mary's Husband (31:54)
• State officials arrive:
  As Mary leaves, health inspectors from Tennessee arrive for an unannounced inspection.

6. Official Inspection & Revelations (34:15 – 39:57)

• State inspection finds major breaches:
  • Dr. Vasquez claims clinic is "not closed," but there's no staff except himself.
  • Inspectors find records outdated by 20 years, inadequate infection protocols, tanks unlabeled or in questionable condition, and no up-to-date logs.
    "I observed Dr. Vazquez opening embryo and sperm cryogenic storage tanks without using personal protective equipment, which is a violation of infection control protocols." – Inspector Deborah Verna (36:17)
  • Storage tank logs incomplete since April 5; count of embryos understated.
• Embryologist warnings:
  Former embryologist describes Dr. Vasquez as “like a caged animal... dissociated from reality. ...He’s not set up for an emergency. Someone needs to take care of it.” (39:15)

7. Legal Action and Aftermath (40:10 – 43:23)

• Attorney General steps in:
  • Dr. Vasquez and the clinic are sued under Tennessee’s Consumer Protection Act for false advertising and misrepresentation, not criminal or malpractice charges.
  • Assets are frozen; a third-party receiver is appointed to manage the crisis.
  • "The tanks are topped off... they've been kept to an adequate level throughout the transition, but that's only because a lot of people worked very hard to make sure that they were." – Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti (41:40)
• Patients still caught in limbo:
  "It feels like I just keep getting older and my embryos keep sitting in a tank." – Mary (43:05)
• Ongoing emotional and practical paralysis:
  Patients await records and access to embryos, but logistics and bureaucracy are painfully slow.

8. Preview of Next Episode (43:23 – 44:13)

• Hints of further revelations:
  The Facebook group uncovers even more disturbing discoveries about someone else working at the clinic, prompting new investigations by law enforcement and health authorities.
  "There's no mention of him with the board. There's no mention of him with a license in the state of Tennessee. There's nothing." – Mary (43:49)
  • Emotional impacts deepen:
    "I don't want anybody touching me. I don't want my own husband touching me. Like, you just feel disgusting, you feel violated, you feel manipulated." – Two unnamed patients (43:59)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the abruptness of closure:
  "I am pissed and terrified at this point because I, I knew something was wrong. Like I knew something was not right with this clinic." – Mary (04:55)

• On isolation and crowdsourcing answers:
  "I don't have the answers, but maybe, like, all together, we can kind of figure out what's going on." – Sydney (09:36)

• On the fragility of hope in fertility treatment:
  “For us, we just can't get started without our embryos. So we're literally just stuck. ...I just keep getting older and my embryos keep sitting in a tank.” – Mary (43:05)

• On being confronted with chaos:
  "Any bad person could have just literally crawled over the counter and gotten people's medical records." – Mary's Husband (08:02)

• On the mishandling of sensitive materials:
  "I observed Dr. Vazquez opening embryo and sperm cryogenic storage tanks without using personal protective equipment, which is a violation of infection control protocols." – Inspector Deborah Verna (36:17)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Mary's Last Appointment: 02:12 – 04:31
• News of Closure Reaches Patients: 04:55 – 07:00
• Clinic Stakeout / Facebook Group: 07:00 – 10:12
• Taylor Turner's Story: 10:12 – 12:51
• Mary’s Fertility Journey: 16:54 – 23:42
• Patients Assemble at Clinic: 23:42 – 26:14
• Ovation Nurses & Medical Records: 27:12 – 29:08
• Attorney Dixie and Record Retrieval: 29:24 – 31:54
• Inspectors Arrive: 34:15 – 39:57
• Attorney General's Lawsuit & Outcomes: 40:10 – 43:23
• Preview of Next Episode: 43:23 – 44:13

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Tone and Style

Throughout, the episode is empathetic, raw, and urgent. Patient voices convey desperation, heartbreak, and anger, often with an undercurrent of dark humor and survivor’s irony. Jeltsen’s narration is measured and investigative, with the occasional personal aside, contributing to the sense of community and shared trauma among those affected.

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Conclusion

“The Stakeout” vividly captures the confusion, fear, and deep personal losses experienced by patients after the sudden collapse of Nashville’s CRH fertility clinic. Beyond individual tragedies, the episode highlights systemic issues: lack of oversight, patient vulnerabilities, and the staggering emotional and financial costs of fertility treatment. The story underlines how, in a barely regulated industry, those with the most at stake are often left to fend for themselves. The episode closes with a hint of even more shocking revelations to come.

Transcript

[Melissa Jeltson]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Melissa Jeltson]

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[Melissa Jeltson]

On the morning of Friday, April 5, 2024, Mary Shaker walks into the center for Reproductive Health and takes a seat in the waiting room. It's the same day as Sydney's appointment, though the two women don't know each other. Like Sydney, Mary is also getting ready for an embryo transfer. For the past few weeks, she's been taking fertility drugs and coming into the clinic regularly for blood work and ultrasounds.

[Mary]

I always have to take time off to go and do all these appointments off work, and so I always pick the earliest appointment possible.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Mary's transfer is about a week away and she's counting down the days.

[Mary]

I'm like, just hoping that things are looking good and we're progressing forward. I mean, I just remember being excited that we were in the process of starting another transfer that could lead to having a family.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Mary and Sydney's appointments are the same morning, and yet they're very different. Sydney leaves the clinic in a panic with her world turned upside down. But Mary's appointment isn't particularly notable at all.

[Mary]

So at 8am I show up and reception is acting normal. I got my blood drawn. It was a different lady than the normal phlebotomist, but I didn't think anything of it because I figured it seemed like it was like kind of a contracting company where it was like they sent nurses to different areas. Anyway, so. And then I went and got my ultrasound. The ultrasound nurse technician did my measurements, got dressed, and I left like it was just a normal check in. Like it was just normal.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Mary finishes up and goes to her job as a veterinary technician. Nothing seems out of the ordinary until later that afternoon.

[Mary]

That's when I got a phone call at 4pm from my IVF nurse saying that, you know, I'm so sorry to tell you this, but your transfer is being pushed to the following month. I'm livid at that point because I'm already on the drug. So I am. I'm asking questions like, what are you talking about? Like, my. Did everything look okay with my blood work? Like, is there anything wrong with my ultrasound? Like, why am I getting pushed? And she just kept saying, you know, we're going to have a meeting next week. I'll know more next week.

[Melissa Jeltson]

The only explanation she gets is that the center is short staffed, but the nurse instructs her to keep taking the medication she's on, including Lupron, a drug that, among other things, stops you from ovulating. You have to inject it and there are a lot of side effects like joint pain, nausea, hot flashes. And on top of that, it's expensive.

[Mary]

Lupron is like $1,000 a vial. If you don't have insurance, maybe even more. It might be like $1,200 a vial. You know, I just kept thinking, okay, well, I'll just keep taking my Lupron. But like, update me, like, tell me what's going on. And like. But I am pissed and terrified at this point because I, I knew something was wrong. Like I knew something was was not right with this clinic.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Mary spends the weekend in anger and confusion. She's gone through a lot to get her body ready for the embryo transfer. And now another setback. Monday morning comes and goes, and Mary hears nothing from the clinic. That Evening, more than 72 hours since she spoke with her IVF nurse, Mary's co worker calls her and tells her to turn on the local news. Now they're airing a piece about the center for Reproductive Health. For the past two years, the couple's driven to midtown Nashville for fertility treatments at the center for Reproductive Health. Unexpectedly at Friday's appointment, a receptionist shared bad news. The staff just received a letter reading, unforeseen circumstances have led to a financial deficit. Regrettably, you will not receive your paychecks tomorrow. As a result, people walked off the job. There on News Channel 5 in Nashville is Sydney and her husband, Austin.

[Sydney]

I'm having to feel grief almost. I'm grieving the plans that I had made. I am grieving the life that I thought I was going to have this summer.

[Melissa Jeltson]

In Nashville, News Channel 5. Mary is stunned. If this is true, if the clinic is going under, it means her embryo transfer is probably not going to happen either. She doesn't know what to do.

[Mary's Husband]

I was so confused and scared and sad and just, like, angry. It felt like another lost chance to start a family.

[Melissa Jeltson]

The next morning, Tuesday, April 9, Mary's husband decides to go to the center for Reproductive Health himself to see what's going on. The news report was concerning, but maybe there was some kind of misunderstanding or maybe the financial issues had been worked out.

[Mary's Husband]

He wanted to just talk to somebody. Like, he wanted to know if there was somebody there and see if he could get any information, you know, not just from the news, but from somebody at the clinic. Right.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Mary's husband says that when he arrives, the clinic doors are unlocked. He walks in and what he sees confirms the couple's fears. There's no one behind the front desk and the room is quiet except for the phones, which are ringing non stop. It feels like a ghost town or a scene from one of those disaster movies where everyone's picked up and left mid sentence. On the reception counter is a set of keys with a sticky note that reads, thanks for the opportunity.

[Mary's Husband]

Any bad person could have just literally crawled over the counter and gotten people's medical records. Could have walked around the clinic like there's just nobody there.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Melissa I'm Melissa Jeltson from School of Humans and I Heart Podcasts. This is what happened in Nashville. Episode two, the Stakeout Mary isn't the only patient who learns that the center for Reproductive Health is closing from the news. In the hours after Sydney's news report airs, panic spreads. Patients report calling the clinic, and no one picks up. Many send emails to the patient portal with frantic questions. Some request their medical records and get them. Others get no response at all. Even the clinic's website remains unchanged, as if nothing's happened. Sydney, it seems, is the only person with any information, and even hers is limited. Desperate for answers, patients begin tracking her down on social media, flooding her with messages. Is the clinic going to reopen? How did you get your embryos out? What should we do? Sydney can't offer much. She was simply lucky. Tipped off just before the doors were shut. But she wants to help.

[Sydney]

I looked at my husband, I was like, I think I'm gonna make a Facebook page for all the families that are going through this, because that way we can all just kind of have each other. I don't have the answers, but maybe, like, all together, we can kind of figure out what's going on.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Mary quickly joins the group. Even if no one knows much yet, at least they can compare notes, share scraps of intel, and try to piece together what's happening.

[Mary's Husband]

Everyone's kind of posting, trying to get information, seeing if anybody's gotten through the phone lines, if anyone's gotten an email, because the phone lines just ring and ring and ring.

[Melissa Jeltson]

There are patients like Mary and Sydney who have been taking hormonal medications for weeks, preparing their bodies for an embryo transfer. They've already paid for the procedures, procedures now indefinitely on hold. There are patients who aren't actively in treatment but are storing their embryos there for future use, trusting that they are safe and will be available when they need them. And then there are people like Taylor Turner, whose window to have a child had already been narrowing.

[Taylor Turner]

You're taught so long, like, don't touch another person or you're gonna get pregnant. Like, growing up, it was like, it's, you know, don't get pregnant. Don't get pregnant. So I think I just thought it was gonna be an easy thing to do.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Taylor and her husband had been trying for a few years to get pregnant before they became patients at the center for Reproductive Health.

[Taylor Turner]

Seeing people around you getting pregnant and, you know, it feels like every time you open up a social media platform, it's in your face. Someone's getting pregnant, having their second, their third kid. So it just. It's tough.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Taylor had just started the fertility process when she got a devastating diagnosis. A brain tumor. She needed surgery immediately. Everything else was put on pause. The recovery process was long, but as soon as she was able, Taylor began an egg retrieval cycle. If there was any chance she could have a child using her own eggs, she needed to do this immediately. Before undergoing radiation, they retrieved nine eggs.

[Taylor Turner]

Five, I believe, got to the blastocyst stage. I may be butchering that name. I'm sorry if I am. So five of them got to that stage, and then we sent them off to get tested.

[Melissa Jeltson]

After testing, Taylor ended up with one genetically normal embryo.

[Taylor Turner]

We have a highly graded boy embryo that we lovingly call 5aa. So we always refer to him as that.

[Melissa Jeltson]

This 1 embryo, 5aa, which is in storage at the center for Reproductive Health, is her only chance for a biological child.

[Taylor Turner]

I do have a progesterone receptive tumor and I can't do IVF again. We have a lot banking on the one embryo that we have.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Taylor's situation was unique, but the fear and uncertainty she felt wasn't. One patient described that stretch of chaos, not knowing what to do or how to do it or whether their eggs and embryos were being protected, as, quote, one of the worst experiences of her life. Across the Facebook group, patients were in different stages of treatment, but nearly all were bound by the same anxiety that what they had stored inside the clinic might be lost. For many, those embryos weren't just biological material. They were the result of years of hope, effort and sacrifice. Patients didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. If Dr. Vazquez was working to keep the embryo safe or trying to set up a way for patients to transition care to another clinic, from their perspective, they were on their own.

[Sydney]

I think me and a couple others realized this is bad, this is not normal. They were just going to ignore us. They weren't going to write us back. They weren't going to answer us. They had truly closed their clinic. I think that's when we realized, like, we're going to have to do something because they're not going to basically help.

[Melissa Jeltson]

The clinic doesn't release a statement Until April 16, a full week after Sydney goes public. It assures patients that they have and will continue to, quote, maintain the safety and integrity of your embryos, eggs and sperm samples and that they will assist patients in getting medical records and in transferring their embryos, eggs and sperm to another clinic. But for some patients, this delayed statement brings little solace.

[Sydney]

With ivf, you already struggle with not having control of the situation. But with this, I truly felt like I couldn't even figure out what was going on.

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[Melissa Jeltson]

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[Mary]

I've been dealing with infertility for over five years. All of the testing we had done, there's not a single test to this day that they can show why I have infertility. I'm just the couple that has unexplained infertility, which is 25% of couples with infertility.

[Melissa Jeltson]

This is Mary Again, the veterinary technician who had an appointment at the clinic on its very last day of operation. Even though she didn't know it then. By the time she arrived at the center for Reproductive Health that morning, her fertility journey had been long and exhausting. She and her husband started trying for a baby when she was just 26, early by most standards, but by her late 20s, it was clear she needed help. She had started treatment elsewhere with a series of what's called intrauterine insemination, or IUIs. This is a procedure where sperm is placed directly into the uterus to increase the chances of fertilization. It's less invasive and less expensive than ivf, and often the first step in fertility care. Mary tried one, then another, and another. Five in total. She got pregnant twice, but both ended in miscarriage. None of them led to a baby. Eventually, she and her husband decided to move on to ivf. But there was a problem. The veterinary hospital where Mary worked didn't offer insurance coverage for it. And paying out of pocket for IVF can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Many people pursuing IVF in the US are in the same position, shouldering the cost on their own.

[Mary]

We, of course, were just running out of money. I'm pretty sure our credit cards had plenty on them. And so we, we had to kind of walk away for a little while. And then my hospital got new benefits. Kindbody. Ding, ding, ding. I thought I finally won the jackpot.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Kindbody is a fertility service that some employers offer as part of their healthcare benefits, allowing access to to a variety of fertility care providers. Full disclosure. I also use Kindbody for fertility treatments. In Mary's case, only one clinic in Nashville accepted Kindbody, the center for Reproductive Health.

[Mary]

As soon as the benefits hit of January 2023, I was in their office.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Mary's first IVF cycle and egg retrieval resulted in 10 eggs, but only four.

[Mary]

Fertilized that turned into embryos. And then after we sent those four off to testing, we only got one viable embryo. That really sucked.

[Melissa Jeltson]

The results were disappointing, but also fairly typical. There's this stereotype that fertility doctors are mad scientists trying to get a monstrous number of eggs, just because when in fact, in most cases, you need to start with a large number of eggs in order to end up with enough embryos for one or two live births. When I started ivf, I was told to expect that about half of the eggs retrieved could be lost at each step of the process, during fertilization, during the wait to see if they grew into embryos and after genetic testing. So if you start with 20 mature eggs, you might end up with four or five viable embryos, and that might only end in one, maybe two pregnancies. And that's if you're really lucky. Still, no matter how much Mary might have prepared for this reality, seeing her numbers diminish from 10 to 1 felt like a gut punch.

[Mary]

I was super devastated.

[Melissa Jeltson]

But she still had one healthy embryo. And in June 2023, Dr. Jaime Vasquez performed the transfer.

[Mary]

I remember crying really hard after they said they were all done, because I think the moment of leading up had finally hit me that, like, okay, this is do or die. Like, this is it. Your one embryo is in, and in 10 days you're going to find out if you're going to be a mom or not.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Eager to see if it worked, Mary took a home pregnancy test, and it was positive.

[Mary]

And I was seeing the line get darker. So I was like, oh, my gosh, this is it. And then the day before I was supposed to go in to do blood work, the line was lighter, and I saw start to panic. And then the next morning, it was even lighter again. Like, I just remember I couldn't even hardly work, I was so distracted. And then I went in for my blood work and it showed HCV of like 20, which is not good.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Mary was having a chemical pregnancy, which is a very early miscarriage that occurs shortly after the embryo implants. Chemical pregnancies may account for 50 to 75% of all miscarriages, though many people don't even know they're pregnant. As it happens so early on in.

[Mary]

The process, you're just not okay after that. For a while, I went to counseling. I joined a support group that I found for women that had been through ivf. I mean, I just had to build up my hope again because we would have to go through another round of IVF to try and have a baby. And so we were back at square one.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Mary went through another egg retrieval, but it was even less successful than her first. This time, she only got a single egg, and it didn't fertilize. That's when Dr. Vasquez suggested she consider a new path using donor eggs. And he had a way to make that happen. Outside of his medical practice, Vasquez ran a separate business called the American Embryo Adoption Agency, or aeaa. Through aeaa, patients who are struggling to conceive with their own eggs could purchase donated eggs or embryos, often the leftovers from other couples IVF cycles.

[Mary]

I had to finally give up on that there would be a 50% me running around this world and that I wanted. I wanted to be a mom more than I Wanted to just have a genetically binded child.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Using a Christmas bonus, Mary and her husband purchased 10 donor eggs for $10,000. They were fertilized with her husband's sperm at the center for Reproductive health. Of the 10, two developed into genetically normal embryos. Mary is about to transfer one of these embryos when the clinic shuts down. Now her embryos are locked inside. On Friday, April 12, exactly one week from her last appointment, Mary sees a Facebook post from another patient with an urgent announcement. Dr. Vazquez is in the office right now. For patients who are desperately trying to get a hold of someone at the clinic, this feels at least promising. Maybe Dr. Vasquez can help. Mary jumps into action.

[Mary's Husband]

At that point, everyone is just like, oh, my God, we have to get down there. Like, people started showing up at this point because we want answers. We want to know what's going on. Pretty much anyone that didn't have to be like, at a clocked in job was down there. We were thinking he would recognize us and he would want to, as a decent physician. Like, he would be like, hey, this is just like a misunderstanding. Or like, he would talk to you. You would think.

[Melissa Jeltson]

As Mary steps off the elevator onto the fourth floor, her heart is pounding. She sees seven other women already gathered in the hallway outside the clinic. Through the glass doors, the waiting room looks the same, just empty. And today, the doors are locked. They don't see Dr. Vazquez, so it's unclear if he's even still there. But on the off chance that he is, they wait. The patients want to talk to him if he won't answer their questions. At the very least, they're hoping they can get copies of their medical records. Documentation that shows their fertility history and proves their legal claim to what remains inside their embryos. Eggs and sperm, what the industry refers to more vaguely as genetic material. Without these records, they can't just move to another clinic for care. They can't transport their embryos. They can't even begin to try to get pregnant.

[Mary's Husband]

We're just all trying to figure out, like, how do we get them to come out? How do we get them to know that we don't mean any harm? We just want our medical records.

[Melissa Jeltson]

As they're waiting, the elevator doors open and another woman emerges, heading towards the clinic. She walks up to the glass door, shakes the handle, and appears confused that the door won't open.

[Mary's Husband]

She thinks she's coming by just to pick up a script. She has no idea that the clinic closed. I'm like, hey, do you know what's going on. And she's like, no, I just got back into town from vacation. I'm supposed to start my IVF this week. And I was like, I think you should watch this news report that came out. It's going to be a lot of information. And we're all kind of in limbo, like we all don't know what's really going on. And she starts crying, and she's like, I just gave this man $30,000 in cash two weeks ago to start this IVF. It shouldn't have been left on the patients to tell other patients about this horrific event. I felt like I had just, like, crushed a woman's soul.

[Melissa Jeltson]

An hour or two goes by. No one comes to the door. And then a couple of nurses get off the elevator. They're not employees of the center for Reproductive Health. Instead, judging by their lab coats, they work for Ovation, an independent embryology lab that partners with another nearby fertility clinic. It seems that they came to CRH just to help out.

[Mary's Husband]

And we're like, what are you guys doing here? Like, are you checking on the embryos? And they're like, yeah, we are just here to check on the embryos to make sure the tanks have nitrogen.

[Melissa Jeltson]

The women start begging the nurses to help, to check if Dr. Vasquez is inside, and if so, tell him to please come out.

[Mary's Husband]

It was such a horrific thing to see. Women were all crying because if this is closing, like, nobody, the doctors, they're going to repeat tests. They're going to not know what's gone on. Like, we need our medical records. They felt so bad for us. They were hugging us. They apologized.

[Melissa Jeltson]

The Ovation nurses tell the women to write down their names and they will search for their medical records while they're inside. They make their way through the clinic doors and disappear into the back.

[Mary's Husband]

An hour goes by, and the women come out and they're like, you guys, we're trying, but everything is so unorganized. We can't find a lot of your guys stuff. Half of it's in a paper form, half of it, it's on. On digital, half of it's not uploaded. I just remember all this. Shaking and scared.

[Melissa Jeltson]

The Ovation nurses are able to pass along some medical records, but not Mary's.

[Mary's Husband]

She just kept saying, I just can't find the proof of the embryos information for you. Like, I was terrified. I was. Oh, my God. It was the out of all of our journey. That was the worst moment ever. I was scared. There wasn't proof that I owned my embryos that they were mine.

[Melissa Jeltson]

The Ovation nurses can't stay for long. They have to get back to work. But on their way out, they mention that Dr. Vasquez is actually there in the office. He doesn't emerge from the back. But Mary isn't ready to give up, not yet.

[Mary's Husband]

And I was like, I'm not leaving. Then all of a sudden, we hear the elevator open up again, and we hear this woman in high heels, and she walks right into the clinic like she owns the place, like a woman in a suit. One of the girls I was there with, Megan, literally yells across the lobby. And she goes, hey, who are you? And she goes, I'm his attorney. Her name was Dixie, and she looks like it, let me tell you. And that's when Megan's like, please, you have to help us. Like, Mary needs her medical records. She needs proof that she has embryos in there.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Dixie is empathetic to her plight. She lets Mary inside the clinic and tells her to take a seat in the lobby. Dixie heads off to search for Mary's records, warning it could take a while.

[Mary's Husband]

She was being nice. She was actually. She was trying to defend him to me. She was like, you know, his staff walked out. We want to help the patients. And, like, at that point, I was like, I don't care. I was like, just please sign my medical record.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Mary sits alone in the empty waiting room. It's strange. There's no receptionist tapping on her keyboard, no other patients chatting in hushed tones, no movement at all. The normal rhythm of the clinic, which is so familiar to her, is absent. The quiet makes her uncomfortable. More time passes. Dixie finds some paperwork, but it's not what Mary needs. Then Dixie calls an IT person on the phone to help. And finally, Mary gets an email with a thousand pages of documents attached. She quickly forwards it to her husband.

[Mary's Husband]

Then I'm like, I need you to start looking through this email right now. Before I leave. I need you to find, in a thousand pages, proof that the embryos are genetically like, half you. We own them. And that, like, they are stored here at this lab. I just needed that proof before I walked out, because I knew, thank God, I knew that would be the last time I would ever be in that lobby.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Soon, Mary's husband texts her that he's found the needed documents, just as a couple of new women show up at the glass door and rattle the handle.

[Mary's Husband]

I'm thinking, oh, my God, it's going to be more patients. They're going to see me in here. I'm going to get their hopes up, they start pounding on the glass door and they look at me and they point at the knob and that's when the attorney showed back up. So the attorney opens the door and is like, we're not open right now.

[Mary]

We will contact.

[Mary's Husband]

They're like, no, we are here from the state of Tennessee. And then the attorney, literally, she looked at me and she said, do you have everything? And I said, yes, I do. And that was it. I walked out of there.

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[Melissa Jeltson]

Center for Reproductive Health, the new women enter the clinic. They aren't Patients, though they're inspectors from the Tennessee Health Facilities Commission. Their job is to investigate complaints about healthcare providers. They received reports that patients have been unable to contact anyone at the clinic, and they're there for an unannounced inspection. Dixie, Dr. Vazquez's lawyer brings them back into the office. An affidavit by one of the inspectors, Deborah Verna, lays out exactly what they saw. The Tennessee Health Facilities Commission declined to make her available for an interview, but here are parts of her affidavit and the resulting report read by a voice actor.

[Deborah Verna]

I observed that there were no staff members present besides Dr. Jaime Vazquez. Dr. Vazquez told us that the clinic was not closed. It was just experiencing low volume.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Dr. Vazquez gives the inspectors a tour of the facility. They are very eager to check on the cryogenic tanks, as a number of patients had expressed worry that their embryos might not be receiving adequate care.

[Deborah Verna]

We asked Dr. Vazquez how many embryos were currently being stored. At first, he said he didn't know. He later stated there were between 800 to 1,000 embryos.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Court documents later show there were 1,188 frozen embryos at the clinic, several hundred more than his estimate. Dr. Vasquez leads them to the cryo tank storage room. Just outside the door, the inspectors spot a tank without an alarm system. It's labeled both backup storage and mice embryos. As they prepare to enter the room, the inspectors ask if they should put on personal protective equipment. Dr. Vasquez tells them it's not necessary. Then, in front of them, he begins opening the tanks.

[Deborah Verna]

I observed Dr. Vazquez opening embryo and sperm cryogenic storage tanks without using personal protective equipment, which is a violation of infection control protocols. When I raised the issue with Dr. Vazquez, he stated he did not need to use PPE.

[Melissa Jeltson]

The inspectors watch as Dr. Vazquez removes the plug from a cryogenic tank and places it on a stainless steel rolling cart. The cart is visibly soiled, covered in an unknown sticky substance. Used tweezers, broken glass, laboratory straws, and a wadded up paper towel. The investigators also take a closer look at the tanks themselves. They had been tipped off by the clinic's former embryologist that one of the tanks might be leaking. They wanted to see for themselves.

[Deborah Verna]

I did not observe a puncture, but I was unable to fully determine if the tank had developed a leak because there were no documented temperature readings of any of the storage tanks.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Since April 5, as the inspector wrote in her report, any facility with cryogenic storage tanks is federally mandated to monitor and document their temperatures regularly. But there was no temperature documentation since Friday, April 5, a full week before. When Verna asks Dr. Vazquez about the missing paperwork, he has no explanation. Inspectors ask Dr. Vazquez to demonstrate the procedures for servicing the tanks, but when he goes to measure the liquid nitrogen, the inspectors say he's off by 7 centimeters. Verna questions Vasquez about it, but he doubles down and insists he's right.

[Deborah Verna]

Dr. Vasquez appeared to be unable to accurately measure the liquid nitrogen and record the measurements.

[Melissa Jeltson]

They ask Dr. Vazquez for a copy of the facility's written policies, but he can't find them. Verna finds something, though, when she checks out a binder laying on the countertop in the lab. It's filled with old documents dated 2001. The health department later notes in its report that CRH's policies and procedures had not been updated to reflect current, professionally recognized standards of practice for over two decades. The inspectors conclude their visit and leave the center for Reproductive Health. But the investigation is not over. They call an embryologist who had recently worked at the clinic, now living in Florida. She tells them that she's owed more than $50,000 for past services and shares her concerns about the embryos. The embryologist declined to speak on the record with me. So here's what she told investigators, according to their report, again read by a voice actor. His behavior is like a caged animal, and he's dissociated from reality. They'll be talking with me, chipper, like everything is great and it's not. The clinic's former embryologist begs someone to intervene. He's not set up for an emergency. Someone needs to take care of it. If something goes wrong with one of the tanks, he doesn't know what to do, and he has no one now that can do this. All of his stuff is gone. I asked Dr. Vazquez's lawyer, Dixie Cooper, about the claims that he was unable to tend to the cryogenic tanks properly. She said the inspectors were incorrect and that he was in the clinic every day checking them. Regardless, on April 26, exactly three weeks after the clinic's final day in operation, someone else does step in to take over.

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[Melissa Jeltson]

Dr. Vasquez and the businesses tied to his fertility clinic are sued by the Tennessee attorney general. It's not a criminal case or even a medical malpractice suit. Instead, Vasquez is accused of violating the Tennessee Consumer Protection act, which prohibits false advertising and misrepresentation about goods and services. The gist of the lawsuit is the patients, considered consumers, paid for services and a certain level of care they didn't get. The clinic's promotional material boasted that patients would receive consistent, personalized, high quality care. And if they ultimately decided to switch to another fertility clinic, the center for Reproductive Health, would facilitate the transfer of care to ensure an easy and seamless transition. Obviously, when the clinic shut down, that's not what many patients experienced. The State estimated that Dr. Vazquez's patients had paid him tens of thousands of dollars for services that they had not received.

[Sydney]

The way that they do it is you pay for your transfer before the cycle, before they even start you on the medicine. Like, you have to pay for your transfer. We had already paid for the transfer. We already paid for all the stuff that goes with it.

[Melissa Jeltson]

The Attorney General's office also obtains a temporary restraining order, freezing Vasquez's assets and effectively removing him from control. The court quickly appoints a third party, called a receiver, to manage the closure and oversee the clinic's storage tanks until they can be moved elsewhere. Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Scrametti gives an interview with News Channel 5 to address the immediate concerns of the patients, namely, if their genetic material stored at the clinic is. Is okay. The tanks are topped off. To the best of my knowledge, they've been kept to an adequate level throughout the transition, but that's only because a lot of people worked very hard to make sure that they were. As this thing collapsed, that was a priority for everybody. They wanted to be sure that there was not some failure of the cooling system for patients. It feels like a turning point. With Vasquez out and someone new in charge, surely things will start moving. They just need their medical records. They just need to get access to their embryos. It seems like it should be straightforward, but anyone who's dealt with the government knows everything moves at a sluggish pace. For these patients who are racing the clock to get pregnant, any delay could mean the difference between having a child or not.

[Mary]

For us, we just can't get started without our embryos. So we're literally just stuck. It feels like I just keep getting older and my embryos keep sitting in a tank.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Next time on what Happened in Nashville on the Facebook group. The women are talking to each other, sharing their experiences at the clinic. And as they compare notes and research, they discover what appears to be another bombshell about someone else working at Dr. Vasquez's clinic. There's no mention of him with the board. There's no mention of him with a.

[Mary]

License in the state of Tennessee. There's nothing.

[Melissa Jeltson]

The Metro Metro Nashville Police Department and the Department of Health launch investigations. I don't want anybody touching me.

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I don't want my own husband touching me.

[Melissa Jeltson]

Like, you just feel disgusting, you feel.

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Violated, you feel manipulated.

[Mary's Husband]

Like all of the emotions you know.

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At that point you're deceived.

[Melissa Jeltson]

What Happened in Nashville is a production of School of Humans and I Heart Podcasts, written reports and hosted by me, Melissa Jeltson. Our producer is Edelise Perez. Our senior producer is Amelia Brock with additional production by Emily Siner and Carl Cadle. Theme song by Jessie Nye Swonger Sound design, scoring and mixing by Jeremy Thal and Jessie Nye Swonger Fact checking by Savannah Hughley and Austin Thompson. Our production manager is Daisy Church. Executive producers are Jason English, Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr and Elsie Crowley. If you're enjoying the show, tell everyone you know and don't forget to leave a rating in your favorite podcast app. Tune in again next week for what happened in Nashville.

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[Melissa Jeltson]

Shh.

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[Melissa Jeltson]

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