Chương 1
"Emily Hayes slapped the doctor before she understood what he was trying to touch.
The sound cracked through the neonatal-transfer lounge so sharply that even the monitor beside her recliner seemed to pause between beeps. Dr. Nathan Cole’s head snapped sideways. Emily pulled the newborn harder against her chest with her other arm, curling around the little bundle until the cream blanket slipped from one shoulder.
Marcus Reed caught Nathan by the forearm before Nathan could take another step.
“Back.”
Nathan let himself be pulled away. A red mark was already spreading across his left cheek. He looked stunned for half a second, then his eyes settled on Emily again.
“Hit me again if you want—but that baby isn’t yours.”
For one impossible moment, Emily heard everything except the words.
Rain hammered the floor-to-ceiling glass behind him. Blue runway lights smeared across the wet pavement outside. A medical helicopter shuddered on the far pad beneath sheets of rain, its rotor gathering speed, while a black executive jet sat farther beyond it with its navigation lights blinking steadily through the storm.
Emily could smell antiseptic, wet wool, and the faint metallic odor from the stainless-steel trolley beside her. Someone had wiped the trolley badly. A narrow reddish smear remained near one wheel.
Marcus tightened his grip on Nathan.
“Doctor, stop talking. Now.”
Nathan did not resist. Marcus moved him two steps toward the walnut-paneled doorway.
Emily looked at Nathan’s face and wanted to hit him again.
She had been awake for almost thirty hours. Her abdomen felt as though someone had sewn a wire through it and pulled it tight. Her dark hair had come loose from the elastic at the back of her head. Every time she moved, the hospital gown rubbed against adhesive where an IV had been removed from her arm less than an hour earlier.
And the child against her chest was warm.
Alive.
Real.
The baby made a tiny sound against the hollow below Emily’s collarbone and turned her face inward.
That sound had become the center of the world.
Nathan twisted enough to keep looking at Emily while Marcus forced him toward the exit. His folded transfer manifest slipped from the pocket of his navy scrubs.
It struck the polished stone floor beside a locked silver infant-transfer case.
The paper opened halfway.
Emily saw two printed identification numbers.
They were almost identical.
Almost.
Nathan glanced toward the helicopter.
“Her real daughter’s band is on the helicopter that just left.”
Marcus stopped moving.
Outside, lightning washed the glass white.
Emily stared at Nathan.
Then, with fingers that did not feel like her fingers, she pulled the edge of the swaddle away from the baby’s feet.
The newborn protested softly.
“Shh,” Emily whispered.
The ankle was impossibly small.
Around it was a white plastic identification band.
Emily had seen the numbers before. Nurses had asked her to compare them to her own wristband at the hospital. She had repeated them while half-conscious from anesthesia because they had told her it mattered.
She lifted her wrist.
Her band ended in 1842.
The baby’s ended in 1814.
Emily checked again.
She moved the infant closer to the amber lamp beside the recliner.
1842.
1814.
She pressed her thumb over one number and then the other as if she could make them agree by changing the angle.
They did not.
The helicopter rose through the rain.
Emily looked at Nathan as Marcus began dragging him through the doorway.
“Then whose baby am I holding?”
Nobody answered.
The question followed the helicopter into the storm.
Nathan was the first person to move.
“Marcus, call the pad.”
Marcus did not release him. “You’re done giving orders.”
“Call the pad.”
“You have been told twice to stand down.”
“The infant in that aircraft may be under the wrong chart.”
That changed Marcus’s expression.
Not much. Marcus Reed looked built out of things that did not move easily. He was tall enough that Nathan, who was not a small man, seemed suddenly narrow beside him. His black medical-security uniform was dry despite the storm, his radio clipped precisely along his shoulder seam, his face controlled in the way of someone who considered visible panic a form of negligence.
He looked at Emily’s wrist.
Then at the baby’s ankle.
His grip on Nathan loosened by perhaps an inch.
Nathan felt it.
“If I’m wrong,” he said, quieter now, “you can throw me out yourself.”
Marcus reached for his radio.
“Control, Reed. Freeze neonatal departures. All of them.”
Static answered.
Emily stared at the baby.
The infant’s foot had slipped free of the blanket. Five pink toes flexed in the cool air.
Emily tucked them back inside.
That gesture frightened her more than the mismatched numbers.
She already knew how the baby liked to be held.
Not upright. Slightly sideways, cheek turned toward Emily’s left shoulder. The little body relaxed when Emily cupped one hand beneath the diaper and pressed the other lightly between the shoulder blades.
She had learned that in less than two hours.
Two hours.
Was that enough time to love the wrong child?
The thought was so ugly she pushed it away.
Marcus stepped farther into the doorway, talking rapidly into the radio now.
Nathan rubbed his cheek once.
Emily hated that she noticed.
“Don’t come near me.”
“I won’t.”
“You touched her.”
“I reached for the band.”
“You reached for my baby.”
Nathan swallowed.
“I reached for the baby you were given.”
Emily’s eyes sharpened.
“You don’t get to change the sentence.”
He looked down at the manifest on the floor.
“I shouldn’t have said I knew she was yours.”
“What?”
Marcus stopped talking.
Nathan’s face changed in a way Emily would remember much later. Not guilt exactly. Something more irritating.
Honesty arriving too late.
“I know the identification chain is wrong,” he said. “I know the infant who departed was wearing the number that matches your wristband. That does not prove biology.”
May you like
Emily stared at him.
“You just told me my daughter was on that helicopter.”
