Chương 6
From a voice on a secure conference call.
“My name is Maya Torres.”
Emily was sitting more upright by then, the baby against her chest beneath the blanket. Porter had wanted separate calls. Emily refused.
“If another woman thinks her child may be here, she talks to me.”
Porter argued for three minutes.
Emily did not.
Eventually Porter stopped.
Now a tablet sat on the side table.
Maya Torres appeared on the screen from a hospital bed at Mercy.
She was younger than Emily had expected. Maybe twenty-eight. Her black hair was braided over one shoulder. A nasal oxygen cannula rested beneath her nose, which Emily found alarming until Maya explained it was for her, not the baby.
A man sat beside her.
“My husband, Luis.”
Luis lifted one hand in an awkward greeting.
Emily nodded.
Nobody knew what etiquette applied.
Maya looked at the bundle in Emily’s arms.
“Can I see her?”
The question emptied the room.
Emily looked down.
She had imagined the other mother as an abstraction.
A second patient.
A number.
A problem created by the existence of another crib.
Not a woman with tired eyes asking to see her child.
Emily adjusted the tablet.
The baby’s face became visible.
Maya made a small sound.
Luis put his hand over his mouth.
Emily looked away from the screen.
“Does she look like yours?”
Maya laughed once, then covered her face.
“I don’t know.”
The laugh turned into a breath.
“I saw her for maybe ten minutes after delivery.”
Emily’s anger found a new direction.
“Why?”
“She had trouble keeping her oxygen up. They took her to observation.”
Nathan, standing near the door, looked down at the floor.
Maya continued.
“They brought me a picture. I kept thinking her nose looked like Luis.”
Luis said quietly, “It does.”
Maya looked at him.
“You say that about every baby.”
“I’ve said it about one baby.”
For a second, absurdly, they both smiled.
Emily understood something then that made the situation worse.
Maya and Luis were ordinary.
There was no rich family arranging a secret transfer. No sinister stranger trying to steal a child. No explanation Emily could hate cleanly.
Just another mother whose day had gone wrong.
Emily turned the tablet so Maya could see better.
“She sneezed three times about half an hour ago.”
Maya stared at the screen.
“Mine sneezed.”
“All babies sneeze,” Nathan said.
Emily and Maya both looked at him.
Nathan raised his hands.
“Sorry.”
Maya’s mouth twitched.
Emily almost liked her for it.
Then Maya said, “The baby here has your number.”
Emily swallowed.
“Yes.”
“They showed me the band.”
“Does she look like—”
Emily stopped.
Like me?
The question felt obscene.
Maya understood anyway.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Emily nodded.
On the screen, Luis leaned closer.
“What are they doing to figure it out?”
Porter explained the identification hold.
She discussed matching original birth records, hospital documentation, sealed backup identifiers, and arranging parent-infant identity testing.
Luis asked sensible questions.
Which lab?
Who collected the samples?
How long?
Who had custody?
Could the current ankle bands remain?
Porter answered most of them.
When she could not, she said so.
Emily respected her slightly more for that.
Maya asked only one question.
“Can she stay with Emily until you know?”
Everyone looked at Emily.
Maya’s eyes filled.
“I know that sounds strange.”
“No,” Emily said.
“I don’t want her put alone in a bassinet because everybody’s scared to touch her.”
Emily looked down at the child.
“No.”
Maya wiped beneath one eye.
“Would you hold her?”
Emily’s throat tightened.
“I already am.”
“I mean if she’s mine.”
Emily closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
Maya nodded.
“Okay.”
The word nearly undid her.
At one in the morning, the storm showed no sign of moving.
The terminal became quieter around them.
A janitor polished an untouched section of stone floor near the reception area and then stopped when he realized the machine’s hum was louder than the neonatal monitor. He wheeled it away without being asked.
Someone brought coffee for Marcus.
He forgot it on the windowsill.
Jenna found Emily a toothbrush.
Nathan sat outside the doorway because Porter had formally removed him from clinical responsibility but Marcus had asked him not to leave the terminal until his statement was taken.
Emily could see one of his shoes from the recliner.
For some reason, that annoyed her.
“Tell him to come in.”
Marcus looked at her.
“Who?”
“You know who.”
Marcus opened the door.
Nathan stepped inside.
The redness on his cheek had faded.
Emily looked at it anyway.
“Sit.”
He chose the chair farthest from her.
“Not there. I don’t want to shout.”
Nathan moved to a cream recliner across from her.
For a few seconds neither spoke.
The baby slept.
Emily said, “Why did you notice?”
“The mismatch?”
“Yes.”
“It’s my job.”
“No.”
Nathan understood.
He leaned forward, forearms on his knees.
“The first alert came from Jenna’s scan. It was marked as network conflict. That happens occasionally when local transport software doesn’t synchronize correctly with the hospital record.”
“So Nina wasn’t lying.”
“Not about that.”
“What made this different?”
“The scan returned two active infant IDs.”
Emily looked at him.
“Meaning?”
“The system wasn’t saying it couldn’t find a patient. It was saying information associated with one identifier was being presented under another.”
“And you told Nina.”
“Yes.”
“She ignored you.”
“She believed it was a chart synchronization problem.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Nathan rubbed his hands together.
“A weight.”
Emily waited.
“The transport packet for 1814 listed a birth weight of five pounds, eleven ounces. One of the handwritten nursing sheets beneath it listed six pounds, two.”
Emily stared.
“Which one is mine?”
Nathan hesitated.
“Your delivery record says six pounds, two.”
She looked at the baby.
“And this baby?”
“We haven’t weighed her here.”
“Why not?”
“Because a weight now won’t prove a birth weight.”
“It could help.”
“It could.”
“So weigh her.”
May you like
Nathan looked toward Porter.
Emily followed his gaze.
