The first patient testimony about a Theranos test result: a miscarriage that

Brittany Gould, wearing a black mask with a clear window through which you could see her mouth, got choked up as she told the court about her experience with Theranos in 2014. She’d used the company’s tests because they were cheap — her language was “cost-effective” — and the results told her, wrongly, that she was miscarrying. It would have been her fourth miscarriage in a row.

The defense in US v. Elizabeth Holmes blocked testimony from Gould about the emotional impact of the bad test, so jurors didn’t hear how it affected her. But “the loss of all these babies and pregnancies, and going through the experience of thinking I’m losing another one, is a lot,” Gould told The Wall Street Journal in an interview before the trial.

Gould’s bad results are the first real-world example of how Theranos’ tests affected patients. So far we’ve heard from employees about bad labs and inaccurate results — but we haven’t seen ordinary people whose lives have been affected by them.

Gould is among the patients that the government will call to testify against Holmes, who is facing 10 counts of wire fraud and two of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. But it’s hard to know exactly how many patients received bad results. Though there was a company database of millions of results, it was encrypted and the government didn’t get the password to it; the original version of the database has been destroyed.

Gould went to Walgreens, which hosted Theranos wellness centers, and “got my finger poked,” she testified. Besides the finger stick test, the experience was unremarkable — until the wrong result came back. Her nurse practitioner called Gould, and had to give her the bad news that it looked like she was miscarrying.

Though Gould’s moment on the stand was brief, her nurse practitioner, Audra Zachman, testified at more length. Zachman had received Theranos’ promotional materials at her practice, Southwest Contemporary Women’s Care. Theranos was “very exciting” when she first heard about it, especially since the company offered to install a lab below one of the practice’s offices.

Gould’s previous miscarriages meant her pregnancy was considered high-risk, so Zachman ordered tests for hCG, an important hormone in pregnancy. In a normal pregnancy, its value doubles every 48 to 72 hours, Zachman said. Gould first took a test from Quest on September 30th, 2014, with a value of 1,005. Then, on October 2nd, a Theranos test showed her levels had jumped to 12,558; on October 4th, another Theranos test showed those values had plummeted to 125.58.

While Zachman told Gould the test values suggested a miscarriage, she also told Gould to keep taking her prenatal vitamins and to get another test. This test, from Quest, on October 6th, showed results consistent with a normal pregnancy. So did the next value from Quest.

Those results “stood out as such a red flag” about Theranos, Zachman said. She’d never seen anything like the results Gould received.

Zachman complained to Theranos, and apparently corresponded with Holmes’ brother, Christian. He blamed…