Brook | Betrayal Weekly

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I went down to DC thinking that I was making a parenting plan,

and I came back with business cards for investigators and

victims' assistance phone numbers in my luggage,

doubting who I knew for the last five years.

I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything.

Betrayal Weekly is officially back for season two.

Whether you've been with us from the beginning or you're just tuning in, welcome.

This season, we're bringing you some of our most riveting, emotional, and unforgettable stories yet.

Starting with this one.

So I had been married for 11 years.

It was very shocking to me what little independence I had so easily fallen into.

And I didn't want to be like that.

That's Brooke Fisk.

She's an ICU nurse from upstate New York.

When she was 32, she divorced her first husband and started over.

The first couple of months were scary and lonely.

You know, I would come home from work and the house would be empty because the kids would be at their dad's and it would be quiet and I would sit down in the kitchen and look around and not know what to do with myself.

Brooke was a newly single mother of two, sharing custody with her ex.

This transition made her painfully aware of how much she sacrificed in her marriage.

She wanted to rebuild a life where she was in control.

So when I got divorced,

really my focus for that first year was to become independent and maintain my independence.

And I really thrived at that.

She bought a small house and fixed it up on her own.

I would watch YouTube videos on how to fix things and how to maintain things.

And it was very empowering figuring out how to do that stuff.

When she started dating again, she was careful.

Her kids had already been through enough change.

I was on dating apps and I would meet people and go on dates and have a lot of fun with that.

But whenever it got to the point of somebody wanting to get serious,

I think that it would scare me and I would back right off.

She didn't want a boyfriend and she definitely didn't want to get married again.

If she was looking for anything, it was just someone to go on dates with.

Her life was busy enough with her two kids and a demanding job in the ICU.

I worked nights

and

it was

an incredible experience.

I loved working in the ICU.

I loved

being able to really impact people's lives.

That's where she met a medical resident.

So his full name was Sikandar Imran, but I called him sick.

A lot of his friends called him sick.

One day, she was called into a room with sick and another doctor.

They were talking about the patient's heart rate, and he said, well,

His heart rate's up now.

It must be because this nurse is in his room.

He was talking about Brooke.

He shot Brooke a smile.

Which, you know, was funny and flirtatious and maybe a little inappropriate at the time.

But

yeah, that was the first time I remember meeting him.

A few weeks later, Brooke was working the night shift with Sick when he asked her to help with a patient.

And once the patient fell asleep, Brooke and Sick got to chatting.

At the end of our conversation, he asked me if I would like to go out with him.

And I said that I don't date doctors.

He said, ever?

And I said, no, I don't date doctors.

I have a rule against it.

And he said,

well, let me know if you change your mind.

And after he left the room, the patient who I thought was sleeping, opened her eyes and she pointed at me.

She had a trach, so she couldn't talk, but she mouthed the words, that man is for you.

And I laughed and I said, No, he's not.

And she said, Yes, he is.

Brooke didn't like the stereotype about doctors and nurses hooking up.

You know, the nurse and the doctor sneak off into a supply closet because that's what's depicted on Gray's Anatomy.

That's why she had the rule, no dating doctors.

But after a few weeks of flirtation, he won her over.

She took his number and decided that just this once, she could break her rule.

They started with an ice cream date, then long walks and dinners at his apartment.

We really developed kind of a friendship-first kind of relationship.

So we would spend a lot of time watching movies, going to movies.

I taught him how to cook Rice American style.

I don't think either of us realized at the time how much closer we were getting while we were doing those casual things.

So

that fall, we went out a couple of times and

we started talking about, you know, where he came from, what my background was.

And I knew that he had come for residency from Pakistan.

He came from a family of doctors.

In fact, his dad had owned a hospital in Pakistan.

Like his older brother, Sick wanted to stay in the US and practice medicine here.

Where he grew up, men and women didn't do public displays of affection.

And I remember the first time that he held my hand in public.

He was so awkward about it.

And I was like,

What are you doing?

Are you holding my hand in public?

You know, kind of joking with him.

And he was like, yeah, I am.

But he was so nervous about it.

There was a real connection between them, but that didn't change Brooke's feelings about commitment.

I was honest with him that I really wasn't looking for any kind of a relationship.

That, you know, I have kids at home and they're my first priority.

He knew that I would only go out with him when my kids were with their dad.

And he was accepting of that.

He also said that he wasn't looking to get into a relationship or get married either.

Regardless of what he said, Brooke could tell he was trying.

He would always pay attention and notice details.

He would notice how I took my coffee and make an effort to prepare it for me that way.

He knew which ice cream flavors I liked at which dessert restaurants.

He was logical and thoughtful and funny and caring.

After six months of dating, they realized that what was happening here was more than just a casual fling.

It was

probably

late the next spring that he looked at me and he said,

Do you consider me your boyfriend?

And I hadn't even thought about it.

And I said,

Well, yeah, I guess I do.

Is that okay?

It was definitely okay with him.

Once they became official, they kept things quiet at work.

A lot of our coworkers

knew that we were together, but it was just kind of a thing that nobody really talked about.

Occasionally, someone would say, oh, I saw your boyfriend, but I would say, oh, do you mean Dr.

Imran?

You know?

Outside the hospital, they built a rhythm.

When Brooke's kids were with their dad, she and Sick planned romantic dinners and weekend getaways.

We loved to go on trips.

What we really liked to do is go to vacation spots and find the foods that they were famous for.

It started with an impromptu road trip to Chicago.

Sick drove with Brooke asleep in the passenger seat.

And I remember him waking me up as we were kind of driving into Chicago.

It was nighttime, and Chicago was lit up.

A lot of the buildings had purple lights on them for some reason.

And he woke me up and he said, look, I called Chicago and had them light the buildings up purple for you because he knew that I liked purple.

That weekend, they didn't have a plan.

They just explored their way through the city.

We found this

really awesome restaurant that had Pakistani food, and they were open all night.

We went there at like one o'clock in the morning, this hole-in-the-wall restaurant, and it was the most amazing food.

Next, they went to New Orleans.

Even though I don't eat meat, we ate alligator.

It was pretty good.

Back home in New York, they weren't living together, but they were in each other's lives in real, tangible ways.

About two years into dating, Sick came to her with a proposition.

He moved out of his apartment and into a townhouse.

And

he had said at one point that he thought that I would come and live with him.

And I said, I can't come live with you.

I have kids.

And he said, well, you can just stay here when your kids aren't home.

And I said, that's fine.

And at that point, we had a conversation about how we really liked the life we had together and we liked being together when we could be together, but that neither of us were really passionate about wanting to get married still.

Brooke had been careful about boundaries from the very beginning, especially when it came to her kids.

For me, there was a lot of hesitancy about introducing someone to my kids.

So there was a little bit of integration, but not a lot.

We all went to the movies together a couple of times, and he came over for dinner a couple of times.

Her kids really took to sick and enjoyed having him around.

After that, he wanted Brooke to meet his family.

His mom came to town and he asked me if I would meet her.

And

she

invited me for lunch and tea.

So I went over and we had a really nice afternoon together.

And we ended up talking about love.

Sick was at work, so it was just brooke and his mom.

And there was clearly a wink and a nod to the conversation because Sick hadn't been completely honest with his mom.

Sick had told her that I was his friend.

But she's a mom and she's not dumb.

So I think she knew what was going on.

She asked me what I thought about arranged marriage and if I thought it was good or if I thought love marriages were better.

And we had a nice conversation about love and she told me about meeting Sick's dad and their marriage.

I didn't get any sense of disapproval from her at all.

She was very kind to me.

The meeting went so so well, Brooke and Sick's mom started sending letters and care packages back and forth, which made Sick a little nervous.

I remember him being a little bit like, she's gonna know, she's gonna know.

And I was like, I think she already knows.

Brooke didn't see the big deal, but for Sick, his family expectations mattered, especially when it came to marriage.

He talked about

feeling like there was an expectation on on him to marry a Pakistani girl and

his family wouldn't accept him marrying a white girl.

And I asked him, well, what if you just don't get married?

Would that be okay?

Would your family accept that?

And he said, I think so.

And I said,

well, okay, let's do that then.

Let's just not get married.

Their agreement worked for almost four years.

But when Sick's residency ended, their relationship hit a crossroads.

He started applying to fellowship programs across the country.

We actually went to a couple of different places.

We took a little road trip around for him to look at them and interview.

The program he really wanted to go to was in D.C., a six-hour drive from upstate New York.

Brooke made it clear that relocating wasn't an option for her family.

I don't think that trying to have a long-distance relationship is a good idea, especially given that I have kids and he's going to be living states away.

And he acknowledged that and we had a couple of conversations about it.

But ultimately, he decided that it was important for him to go to this program.

It was a program that his brother had done, so it was kind of a family legacy.

It was bittersweet, but Brooke supported sick.

If he wanted to start his career in America, this really was for the best.

I was very happy for him, congratulated him.

I bought him a cake and

helped him start looking for places to buy down there and helped him paint it.

and helped him pick out furniture and decorate it.

And then, you know, we kind of said goodbye after that.

But of course, goodbye wasn't really goodbye, as often happens in these relationships.

They knew they had an expiration date, but they were having a hard time letting go.

I remember walking into the airport with tears streaming down my face, bawling after saying goodbye to him.

A TSA agent came up to me and she said, are you okay?

And I I said, yeah, I just said goodbye to my boyfriend.

But I'm sure she thought something was horribly wrong just from the amount that I was crying.

We said a lot of goodbyes that year.

This began a new era of their relationship, one where they kept finding their way back to each other, weekend by weekend.

We weren't in a relationship.

We were not together.

But what we would end up doing is anytime either one of us had like a long weekend free or

if it was one of our birthdays we would take a little trip together.

For her 37th birthday, Zick planned a trip to the Poconos.

We stayed at a bed and breakfast up in the mountains, fireplace,

woody,

romantic

getaway.

candlelit dinners and fireside chit-chat every night, you know.

Brooke didn't know it at the time, but what happened that weekend would affect the rest of her life.

At the end of their trip, they said another tearful goodbye.

It was a great time, but that whole weekend, Sick had been keeping a secret.

He just couldn't bring himself to tell her in person.

He

called me a couple of days later and he said that he wanted to talk to me

and he wanted to let me know that he had talked to his mom and

that he had agreed to let his mom arrange him a marriage.

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After a romantic getaway for Brooks' birthday, Sick called her with surprising news.

He was moving forward with an arranged marriage.

I was surprised because he had not been interested in an arranged marriage and hadn't expressed any interest in it.

She always thought sick wanted a love marriage.

And when he broke the news, he didn't even seem excited about the idea.

He seemed resigned to it.

He seemed sad about it.

He talked about it like

he was going to get a girl who wanted to marry a doctor.

Brooke tried to hide it, but she was hurt.

I felt sad, but

I think that part of me had been expecting it because we'd basically been trying to say goodbye for a year.

So even though part of me felt like he was still mine, he really wasn't mine anymore.

If he was serious about pursuing this, that meant their relationship had to be over.

I told him that

if that was happening, then we really needed to stop talking to each other because it wasn't fair to another woman to think that she was getting a husband and have her husband over here in the United States talking to me and going on trips with me.

That's just not fair.

And he agreed.

And

for all the times we had tried to say goodbye over the past year, I think

that finally seemed to be the thing that let us stop talking to each other.

After that conversation,

I think we went the longest period we had ever gone without talking.

It was over two weeks.

Neither of us reached out.

And then

I

realized my period was late.

I took a pregnancy test, and it was positive.

Brooke knew it happened during their Poconose trip.

The moment I realized I was pregnant, I started thinking about the baby and who he was going to be.

I really just felt like that was my baby from the minute I knew I was pregnant.

It felt like a gift from the universe.

She knew this would be her last baby, and it just felt right.

But now, she faced another decision.

I wasn't sure if I should even tell him.

Part of me thought,

if I don't tell him, he'll never know.

And I just have the baby and go on with my life and he can go on with his life.

On the other hand, it felt wrong to keep this from him.

Is it fair of me to not

give him that choice and that opportunity to take part in his child's life?

I knew how much I liked being a parent, and I wouldn't want to miss the opportunity to be in my child's life.

So

I decided to tell him because I thought that it was the right thing to do.

She told him over the phone.

He was quiet for a few seconds and then.

His immediate reaction was to ask me to have an abortion.

I told him I couldn't.

And

he didn't have to be involved.

He didn't have to financially support the baby.

He didn't have to have anything to do with the baby.

I was already a single mom.

I loved having kids.

I'm good at raising kids.

If he doesn't want to have the baby, that's fine.

She went to the doctor and learned the baby was perfectly healthy.

It was a little boy.

I was already picking out names before I was even showing because I already knew who he was.

I decided to name him Makai and call him Kai for short.

But sick wasn't on the same page.

After she told him, he started spiraling.

That started months of phone calls and text messages begging and pleading with me to have an abortion.

and telling me that I was ruining his life,

that this was going to cast shame on his family in Pakistan.

That his mother was going to be ridiculed and he was going to be an outcast and

that I was causing him

mental anguish.

She understood that having a baby outside of marriage wasn't part of his plan.

But plan or not, this was happening.

All of that text message and the phone calls about you're ruining my life, you're ruining my mom's life, that all made me pretty mad.

She kept waiting for Sick to come around, but every time she talked to him, he tried a new tactic.

One day, I was sitting on my bed, and I was on the phone with Sick, and he said that

he had talked to a friend of his who was an OPGYN,

and that his friend had told him that I could take mesoprostal

and that it would abort the baby and that I could do it right there at Sick's house and it would all happen very easily and I wouldn't even need to go to the hospital or anything and sick could be there with me the whole time.

And Sick asked if I would be willing to do that and I said absolutely not.

No.

He said that he wasn't trying to pressure me, but that we were running out of time because we could only do this in the first trimester.

And my first trimester had been coming to an end.

So he wanted me to

do this.

And I said no.

When she started the second trimester, the conversation was over.

She'd made her choice.

The window for second guessing had closed.

Now that it was official, Brooks shared the news with her two kids.

We had a little gender reveal cake for the baby.

We went shopping and bought him a bunch of clothes and some stuff for his crib.

She didn't hear from sick for a few weeks, but when he did reach out again, he'd had a change of heart.

Eventually, he starts talking about setting up a bank account for me and the baby.

And

Then he asks me if I'll come down to see him

so that we could figure out a parenting plan and figure out a way that we could have this baby together and him still be in DC and maybe in New York, but still have this baby together.

Finally, the sick she knew was back.

She made plans to drive down to DC right after her four-month ultrasound appointment.

The morning that I left, I went to the doctor.

We did a fetal heart rate.

Everything looked good.

And I left and

set off to go down to DC to see him.

I drove.

The whole way down there, he's texting me reminders to get up and walk so I don't get a blood clot, reminding me to drink water, asking me how my drive is going.

When she got to Sick's house, he gave her a long hug.

Everything seemed

back to normal.

Except for one thing.

He didn't say anything about my belly.

He didn't try to touch it or anything like that.

When he came to the baby, he still seemed to have a wall up.

He hadn't even wanted me to tell him the gender of the baby.

So I knew it was a boy.

But he didn't.

At one point that evening,

I did

start to bring up the baby, the pregnancy, and he said,

let's wait and talk about this tomorrow.

And I said, okay.

And the next morning, we got up and we start making breakfast together, which we've done hundreds of times before.

I'm making eggs and he's making coffee.

And he's making coffee that we had gotten when we went to New Orleans.

And it's this chicory root coffee.

So it's a little bit stronger.

So when I I started drinking it, I noticed that it burned my stomach a little bit.

And

I kind of just thought, you know, I'm pregnant.

I probably shouldn't be drinking so much coffee.

I'm probably developing an ulcer.

Maybe I shouldn't drink this.

So I didn't finish my cup of coffee.

I sat to the side, finished breakfast.

and went on about our day, got ready, went shopping.

But as soon as they got to the mall,

I was having a queasy feeling, so I ended up going into the bathroom quite a few times.

At some point, he asked me if I was feeling okay,

and I told him, no, that I had an upset stomach.

His response was just, oh, okay.

And that struck me in that moment as being very odd because

he normally have asked if I needed anything or gotten me a drink or had some follow-up to make sure I was all right.

And in that moment, I remember thinking that I wondered if he was hoping that something was wrong.

And then of course I convinced myself to put it out of my mind.

As the day went on, she started to feel better.

So they decided to get takeout and go back to his place.

After dinner, he put on my favorite movie and said that he was going to make me a cup of tea for my stomach.

So it was dark in the room.

He brought me the tea.

And when I tasted it, I noticed that it was unusually sweet, which was not how I took my tea.

And he said...

that he had accidentally put in both sugar and honey, which was odd because he always remembered how I took my tea.

But I drank it anyway.

And when I got toward the bottom of the cup of tea, I took a sip of it

and there was

grit in the bottom.

And from being a nurse, I knew that texture was ground up.

pill.

So I spit it back in the cup and I put the cup down and I said that I had to go to the bathroom.

I went into the bathroom and I put my finger down my throat and then I put a toothbrush down my throat to try to make myself throw up and I couldn't.

And I sat there in the bathroom and I

wasn't sure what to do.

As the minutes passed, she started doubting what she'd seen at the bottom of her cup.

I've known him for years.

I've been dating him for years.

This man loves me.

The man I know wouldn't do that.

And then I remembered that conversation where he told me that his friend suggested that I take mesoprostal

and it would cause an abortion.

And I told him no.

And I just,

I knew that's what he did.

But then I kept going back to maybe I'm crazy.

Maybe there weren't pills in my cup.

He wouldn't poison me.

So maybe I'm insane.

But then if he did that to me,

what else would he do?

If I go out there and he knows I know

and he actually did it,

will he kill me?

If he wants to get rid of the baby so bad that he'll poison me, is he going to kill me?

So I can't let him know that I know.

In that moment, she came up with a plan.

And before we keep going, I want to flag that what Brooke is about to describe could be emotionally triggering for some listeners.

If you've had experience with pregnancy loss, please take care while listening.

Now back to Brooke.

Here's what she decided to do.

I'm going to wait until he goes to sleep and I'm going to sneak out of the house and I'm going to go to the hospital.

And so I sat down on the couch with him and the movie was almost over.

And I told him that I was tired and I wanted to go to bed.

And so the movie ended and

he got up to take my dishes to the kitchen and I said, I'll take them.

And he said, no, I'll take them.

And he pulled them out of my hands.

took the dishes to the sink and I saw him tip the cup into the sink.

And then then he went into the bathroom.

And when he went into the bathroom, I thought, I have to know.

So I turned on the kitchen light and I looked and there was pill fragments in the bottom of the cup.

So I got a plastic baggie out

and I scooped out the rest of the pill fragments that were in the cup and I zipped them up in the little plastic baggie and I hid them in my purse.

And I thought, when he goes to sleep, I'll go to the hospital.

Because now I don't so much think I'm insane.

I think he probably did poison me.

But now I really do need to wait until he's asleep.

Now that she had seen the proof, the panic came flooding in.

What had he given her and how much of it did she drink?

But she had to stay calm so she could get out and get help.

So I got ready for bed and I laid down next to him.

And I just listened to him breathing

and waited to hear hear his breathing change

so I could hear when it got deeper so I could sneak out of bed

and while I was laying there

I felt it pop

and I felt myself start bleeding

I got up and ran into the bathroom and I was bleeding

and I started crying and laid down on the bathroom floor

at this point, I was

almost 20 weeks along, four months pregnant.

The baby was fully formed.

So, having this happen in his bathroom at his apartment is certainly medically dangerous for me.

And

he came in and he said, What's wrong?

And I said, The baby's dying.

You need to call 911.

And he said,

No, you're fine.

I'm a doctor, I can take care of you.

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This is Danielle Fischel from Pod Meets Meets World.

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Brooke planned to get out of Sick's house quietly and drive herself to the hospital.

Before she could, she started bleeding.

Four months into the pregnancy, she knew she needed to get help quickly.

But when Sick found her on the floor of the bathroom, he didn't want to call an ambulance.

And I said, you need to call 911.

And he said, no, you're okay.

I'm a doctor.

You're going to be fine.

I didn't know if he was refusing to call 911 because

he wanted to kill me.

She was terrified for herself and for her baby.

Part of me was really hopeful that maybe if I could just get to a hospital, somehow the baby was going to survive.

So I was desperate for him to call 911.

I said, you don't understand.

Your son is dying, your son.

And if you don't call 911, then I will.

She hadn't told him the sex of the baby until this moment.

When she called the baby his son, something shifted for sick.

And then he said,

okay, I'll call.

And he went and he called 911.

And then the ambulance came.

And

at this point, I was bleeding a lot more.

The paramedics picked her up from the floor and laid her on the stretcher.

As they're pushing me out of the apartment, I see my purse sitting on the counter.

And I remember that the pill fragments are in a baggie in my purse.

So I ask the paramedic to hand me my purse and he says, you don't need it.

And I say, no, I want my purse.

And Sick picks it up and he says, I'll take it.

I have another moment of panic thinking, if the paramedic asks me for my insurance card, Sick is going to open my purse.

and he's going to see that baggie in there with the pills in it and he's going to get rid of it.

So they load me into the ambulance, and Sick gets into the ambulance with us.

I just keep thinking: if I can get this paramedic to just make eye contact with me, he'll see in my eyes

that I'm afraid, and I don't want sick here.

But the paramedic was too busy triaging Brooke to notice.

All the while, Sick stayed right by her side, acting concerned.

So we get to the hospital, and the whole time, Sick is holding my purse.

Finally, we get up to labor and delivery and he sets it down on the counter in the room.

Sick wouldn't leave her and he made it known that he was a doctor.

She's right there the whole time, right next to my bed, helping them move me from stretcher to bed and talking to the doctor about their medical training and where they've both worked.

And he's that normal person that everybody likes in that room.

Finally, he goes into the bathroom and I whisper to the nurse to make him leave.

I could just see the color drain out of her face.

She looked at me and she whispered back, are you okay?

And I said, no.

A couple of minutes later, the charged nurse came in and got sick and said that she wanted to show him the father's lounge.

And she took him out.

And then the nurse and the doctor came and asked me what was going on.

And I said, I swear I'm not crazy, but I think he poisoned me.

I found pills in my tea.

And they're in a baggie in my purse.

The nurse went into Brooks' bag and grabbed the Ziploc with the pill fragments.

She wanted to send them to the lab for testing.

Not long after that,

my water broke

and

Kai was born.

He was not alive.

Part of me still hoped he would cry when he was born, but he didn't.

But they wrapped him up in a blanket and

put a little tiny hat on him and brought him to me.

They let me hold Kai

for a couple of hours.

When I was holding Kai,

I wasn't thinking at all about what Sick had done.

It was more thinking about the loss.

Even though Kai wasn't alive,

still looking at him,

there was sort of this amazement about

who he was as a person,

which is odd to say about somebody who wasn't alive, to recognize who they are as a person.

But he was, he was a little person with little long fingers and long toes.

And that's what I was thinking about when I was looking at him.

that he probably would have played basketball and he would have been tall and maybe he would have played piano because he would have had long piano-playing fingers.

Probably sounds strange to somebody who hasn't lost a baby, but that's what I was thinking about in that moment.

Sick was in the room, too.

When he saw

what Kai actually looked like,

Sick cried.

I almost think that that that is the first time Sick realized that it was a whole human.

I think that was really the first time that it was real in his mind that that was his son.

After they took Kai's footprints and filled out the paperwork, his body was taken for an autopsy.

7 a.m.

rolls around and the day shift nurse comes in.

And she takes me in the bathroom and she very quietly asks me what happened

once again brooke told the story and she says what are you gonna do and i said i don't know i don't know what to do

and she said

if there's any part of you

that thinks that this man poisoned you and killed your baby, you need to report him.

Brooke agreed.

And she said, have you asked him?

Have you asked him if he did this?

And I said, no.

And she said, I think you should.

So they went back in the room just as Zick was walking back in.

And he said he was going to go back to his apartment and take a shower.

get changed and bring me some clothes.

And I said that before he left, I wanted to ask him a question.

And I asked him,

did you poison me?

And he said,

do you honestly think I would do that to you?

I said, yes, I do.

And I told him, I found

ground up pill in the bottom of my cup.

And I gave it to the nurse and they're going to have it tested.

So if you did this,

you need to come clean with me right now.

And he started crying and he put his head down on the bed.

He was sitting in a chair next to the bed and he put his head down on the bed

and

just started bawling.

And he told me that

he had put mesoprostil in my coffee that morning and that's why I had a stomachache.

And when it didn't work, he

ground up more and put it in my tea that night.

It was the final confirmation.

She just stared at him in silence, heartbroken.

Sick continued talking and tried to rationalize what he'd done.

And he said that the reason that he did it is because

he knew that I loved him and I wanted to do what was best for him.

But he knew that if I made the decision to have an abortion, I would be unhappy about it.

So he was making the decision for me

so that I wouldn't have to live with it.

He said it like he thought that he was doing something benevolent for me,

but he wasn't.

He was taking from me somebody that I loved,

somebody that I wanted in my life.

And he was justifying it and acting like he was doing it for my benefit.

He really seemed to believe he had done the right thing.

I couldn't believe what he was saying to me.

I couldn't believe it.

I

felt betrayed.

I felt like that's not your decision to make.

And

he was completely selfish.

Rather than taking on what he thought was going to be ridicule, he was causing pain to other people.

That's a coward.

And while he was saying it,

there's a knock on the door to my hospital room.

And that was the police.

The police took Sick into another room for questioning.

And he confessed that he had poisoned me.

So they arrested him and took him to jail.

Brooke wouldn't see him again until his sentencing hearing.

But Sick had left his phone with her, so she picked it up and made a call.

I called his brother, who lives here in New York, and I told his brother

Sick had been arrested and what he had been arrested for, that he had poisoned me and killed our baby

and his brother said he didn't know that I was pregnant.

I said

that

I couldn't take care of Sick anymore, that he was not my responsibility and he needed to come down here and take care of his brother.

Before they hung up, Sick's brother had one more thing to say.

While he didn't know that I was pregnant, they did know that

Sick and I were seeing each other, and his mom had known for years.

She'd known since the day she met me,

and they had just been waiting for him to tell them.

It was a tragic revelation.

The pressure Sick put on himself to live up to his family's expectations was self-imposed.

His family would have accepted Brooke

and their son.

Brooke called a friend who flew down to DC to pick her up at the hospital.

Before they started the drive home, they stopped by Sick's apartment to get Brooke's bags.

The police met us there.

It was very strange to go in.

There's crime scene tape in his apartment, and it's been ransacked by the police.

Just an odd feeling knowing that that's now the scene of a crime, and it's a place that you painted and decorated.

The police had turned the apartment upside down to find more evidence, and they did.

They found white powder in a pack of 100 misopristol tablets with 10 doses missing.

He had given her all 10 in one day.

It was a massive overdose.

So he had given me 200 milligrams in the morning.

And then when that didn't work, he gave me an additional 600 milligrams in the evening.

He

probably

needed to give me that dose because I was way further along in pregnancy.

The police told Brooke they'd be in touch.

And that was it.

The drive back to New York was

awful.

There's There's no eloquent way to say that.

It was just awful.

I cried most of the way back.

I missed my baby.

I went down to DC thinking that I was making a parenting plan.

And I came back missing my baby with business cards for investigators and

victims assistance phone numbers in my luggage, doubting who I knew for the last five years, my whole world had changed.

And then came the regrets.

Even though she knew it wasn't her fault, all she wanted was to go back in time.

You know,

blaming yourself.

I wish I had never driven down there.

I shouldn't have done that.

I should have known better.

I've worked through that.

I don't still blame myself, but

at that time I did, I kept thinking that, how stupid was I to drive down there?

When she got home, the loss became even more real

because she had to find a way to tell her kids.

Not only was I dealing with my own emotions, but I had to tell my kids that I wasn't pregnant anymore and they weren't getting a baby brother.

And not only were they not getting a baby brother, but their baby brother was murdered.

And not only was he murdered, he was murdered by somebody that they knew and trusted.

And I have to help them through that while I'm trying to manage my own emotional fallout from this

and also figure out what to do about this criminal case.

I can hardly function

to get dinner on the table.

Her kids weren't just mourning a baby brother.

They were mourning a sense of safety, and Brooke had to carry all of it.

She took leave from work, leaned on her friends, and found a therapist.

Even with all the support, she stayed awake at night, trying to make sense of what happened.

I really went through this period of wondering if I ever knew him at all.

And did I ever see him?

Or was I fooling myself?

Was he a monster this entire time and I just didn't want to see it?

And I really did have to think about that because

either

I loved a monster and never knew he was a monster

or

I loved a man

and then he became a monster.

One of those is true.

Her heart tells her it was the latter.

I had to objectively look at the person that he was and look at his actions leading up to that time and look at the way he treated people.

I really think that I loved a man who became a monster.

Sick was charged with premeditated fetal homicide.

He initially pled not guilty.

I didn't want to go to a trial.

I really really just wanted him to plead guilty and take responsibility for what he did.

That's when I decided to speak out about what had happened.

Brooke went to the local news to tell her story.

After I talked to the media, he changed his mind and decided to plead guilty.

After that, the only thing left was the sentencing hearing.

He was facing 20 years to life in prison.

He's not an American citizen, so whenever he completed his sentence, he was going to be deported back to Pakistan.

So when he decided to plead guilty, what I decided to do was to ask for leniency for him.

So I wrote a letter to the judge and asked for leniency.

And I explained to the judge that

my son is gone.

My son is dead.

Kai's life is over.

He

will never

do anything with his life.

He's gone.

He won't have a chance.

But Sick still does.

He still has a chance.

And I would hate to see two lives be gone

because of this.

And I really think that rather than wasting the rest of his life sitting in prison,

Sick owes it to Kai

to do something with his life.

The judge read my letter and granted him leniency and sentenced him to

four years in prison.

Otherwise, he would have given him 20 years to life.

Sick was released from prison in 2021 and deported to Pakistan.

Today, it's been eight years since the crime.

And despite everything she's gone through, she manages to live a joyful and fulfilling life.

Today,

I

have finished my master's degree in nursing and I'm teaching nursing.

I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu a couple of times a week as a fun hobby hobby and exercise.

It's very empowering.

I love doing that.

She and her kids chose to memorialize Kai.

His brother

got a burial plot and said a prayer over him.

And we buried him in a cemetery here.

So he's got a little gravestone in a cemetery up here in upstate New York with his little superhero on it.

And it says, says, superheroes never sleep.

We end all of our weekly episodes with the same question.

Why do you want to share your story?

When people hear my story, it is a little bit shocking.

And people often say, oh my God, I can't believe that happened to you.

But what I like people to take from it is

no matter what happens, no matter what you go through, you get stronger and you learn to carry it.

I was surprised that I made it through.

I was surprised by the amount of strength that I came up with.

And looking at it from the other side, I look back and

I think, wow, I made it through that.

But if I could make it through that, people can make it through anything.

They really can

Next week on Betrayal Weekly.

I go, what are you involved in?

Are you being investigated by the FBI?

And he looked at me so coldly.

Like he never knew me.

And he said, if I go down, I'm taking you with me.

If you would like to reach out to the betrayal team or want to tell us your betrayal story, email us at betrayalpod at gmail.com.

That's betrayal, p-od at gmail.com.

We're grateful for your support.

One way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts.

And don't forget to rate and review Betrayal.

Five-star reviews go a long way.

A big thank you to all of our listeners.

Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.

The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Faison.

Hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning.

Written and produced by Monique Laborde.

Also produced by Ben Fetterman.

Associate producers are Kristen Mel Curie and Caitlin Golden.

Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreincheck.

Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio.

Additional editing support from Tanner Robbins.

Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Baines.

Music library provided by MIBE Music.

And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Ready to hear more?

Remember, you can get access to 100% ad-free episodes with an iHeart True Crime Plus subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

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Kevin and Rachel and Peanut MMs and an eight-hour road trip, and Rachel's new favorite audiobook, The Cerulean Empress, Scoundrel's Inferno.

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