Chương 8
The field history was technical and ugly.
Patient identifiers were reassigned.
Death status followed one chart.
Treatment history followed the other.
The system showed that someone had effectively decided which name belonged to which infant after one was already dead.
Maria read the report twice.
“This still doesn’t tell us who was physically who.”
Rachel sat perfectly still.
Ethan said, “But it proves there was a switch.”
“It proves records were changed.”
“After the death.”
“Yes.”
“Without telling us.”
“It appears so.”
Rachel whispered, “Emily.”
Maria looked at her.
“We are at the point where approaching Joanna is justified.”
Ethan’s throat tightened.
“What happens if she says no?”
“We deal with that when it happens.”
The letter went through Joanna Carter’s attorney.
She did not say no.
She did not say yes.
For twelve days she said nothing.
On the thirteenth day, Rachel received a voicemail.
Not from Joanna.
From Michael Carter.
His voice was controlled and exhausted.
“You don’t know us. We don’t know you. I understand why your attorney did this the way she did. I’m trying to appreciate that. But my wife has not slept in almost two weeks. Emily knows something is wrong. We need proof that you aren’t trying to take our daughter.”
Rachel listened to the message three times.
Then she sent it to Ethan.
He called her.
“What do we say?”
“The truth.”
“Which part?”
“That we don’t know what we want.”
Ethan leaned against his kitchen counter.
“Do you want custody?”
Rachel was silent.
“Rachel.”
“I don’t know.”
“We need to know before we meet them.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Yes.”
“No. We need not to lie.”
He closed his eyes.
“She has parents.”
“I know.”
“You and I are strangers to her.”
“I know.”
“If she is Ava.”
“Emily.”
“What?”
Rachel’s voice broke slightly.
“Her name is Emily.”
Ethan sat down.
“All right.”
“She’s Emily unless she ever tells us otherwise.”
“Okay.”
A week later, they met Michael and Joanna Carter in Maria’s office.
Emily was not there.
Joanna walked in first.
She was the woman from the photograph, though Ethan had barely looked at her then.
She wore no makeup and carried a paper folder against her chest. Michael followed, tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a work jacket with the logo of an electrical contractor.
Nobody shook hands.
They sat across from one another.
For several seconds no one spoke.
Then Joanna looked directly at Rachel.
“Did you follow my daughter?”
Rachel swallowed.
“I hired an investigator to confirm an address. He took a photograph without me asking him to.”
“You kept it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she looked like my husband.”
“Ex-husband,” Ethan said quietly.
Rachel glanced at him.
Joanna’s face tightened.
“Do you understand how insane this sounds from my side?”
“Yes,” Rachel said.
“No, you don’t.”
Rachel nodded.
“You’re right.”
Joanna seemed prepared for resistance and momentarily had nowhere to put her anger.
Michael leaned forward.
“You’re saying the hospital might have given us the wrong baby.”
“We’re saying their records show an identity reassignment,” Maria said. “We don’t know the biological truth.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Michael said.
Maria nodded once.
Ethan answered.
“Yes.”
Michael looked at him.
“You saw your baby after she died.”
“I saw a baby they told me was mine.”
“And you identified her.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Ethan’s mouth went dry.
“I looked at her face and hand.”
“Did you know what she looked like?”
“She was born premature. I had seen her for minutes before the transfer.”
Michael stared at him.
“So you don’t know.”
“No.”
Joanna opened her folder.
Inside were photocopies of hospital records.
“My mother kept everything,” she said. “I hated her for it. Every bill, every discharge sheet, every stupid parking receipt.”
Her hand shook as she pulled out a photograph.
It showed a newborn under a clear incubator canopy.
“There.”
Rachel stopped breathing.
Joanna pointed to the infant’s left ear.
A crescent notch.
Small.
Distinct.
No one spoke.
Joanna’s eyes filled.
“That’s my baby.”
Rachel whispered, “Yes.”
Joanna looked at her.
“No.”
Rachel closed her mouth.
Joanna pressed both palms against the table.
“I gave birth to a little girl. I spent three days thinking she was going to die. Then a doctor told me she had stabilized. I sat beside that incubator for four weeks. I pumped milk in a storage room because I was too embarrassed to do it around anybody. I learned how to work a feeding tube. I learned every alarm on that monitor. Don’t look at a photograph and tell me yes like you were there.”
Rachel’s face crumpled, but she stayed silent.
Michael put a hand over Joanna’s.
Ethan said, “She’s your daughter.”
Michael looked at him sharply.
Ethan continued.
“Whatever a test says. Whatever happened that night. You raised her. I’m not here to erase that.”
“You don’t get to promise what happens next,” Michael said.
“No.”
“Courts exist.”
“I know.”
“People change.”
“I know.”
“If she’s biologically yours, you might decide six months from now that grief gives you rights over us.”
Ethan absorbed that.
“You’re right.”
Rachel looked at him.
He turned to her.
“We cannot ask them to trust what we feel today.”
Joanna wiped her eyes.
“So what are you asking?”
Rachel answered.
“A test.”
Joanna closed her eyes.
“Why?”
“Because if there was a switch, another mother buried your biological daughter.”
That was the first time anyone had said it aloud.
Joanna made a small sound.
Michael’s hand tightened around hers.
Rachel continued carefully.
“If Emily is biologically ours, then the baby we buried may have been yours. I don’t think either family gets to live inside the wrong truth because the right one is horrible.”
Joanna stood and walked to the window.
Nobody stopped her.
Outside, a delivery truck backed into an alley, beeping steadily.
After a while Joanna said, “Emily is afraid of blood.”
Rachel looked at Maria.
Maria said nothing.
Joanna gave a humorless laugh.
“I know that’s ridiculous.”
May you like
“It isn’t,” Rachel said.
“She fainted getting her ears pierced. Full collapse. Took out a display of sunglasses.”
