Chapter 2
The ambulance took me to St. Matthew’s Hospital.
Dad rode beside me.
I kept one hand over my stomach while monitors tracked the baby’s heartbeat.
“Is she all right?” I asked.
The paramedic checked the screen.
“Her heartbeat is strong.”
My daughter.
Ryan and I had agreed not to learn the baby’s sex, but I had secretly asked the doctor two months earlier.
I needed one truth that belonged only to me.
At the hospital, the obstetrician examined the bruises on my arms and legs.
The baby was safe, but stress had triggered contractions.
“You need observation overnight,” Dr. Patel said. “Possibly longer.”
Dad sat beside my bed.
For once, he did not tell me everything would be fine.
He knew empty promises would not help.
“Ryan said something about a first baby,” I whispered.
“He wanted to upset you.”
“But Mom signed those papers.”
Dad looked away.
My parents had divorced when I was sixteen.
They rarely spoke unless my name forced them into the same room.
Mom attended every holiday, called every week, and cried when I announced my pregnancy.
I could not understand why she would help Diane take my child.
Dad opened his phone.
“I called her.”
“What did she say?”
“She’s coming.”
Mom arrived twenty minutes later.
Her hair was uncombed, and she wore slippers beneath her coat.
She rushed toward my bed.
“Emma, thank God.”
“Why did you sign the guardianship papers?”
She stopped.
“I can explain.”
“You called me unstable.”
“I didn’t read everything.”
“You signed a sworn statement.”
“Diane said it was part of an emergency birth plan.”
Dad stood.
“An emergency plan giving her custody?”
Mom looked at him.
“You don’t know what she told me.”
“Then tell us.”
Mom sat in the chair near the door.
Three months earlier, Diane contacted her privately.
She claimed Ryan feared I was developing the same mental illness that had caused a breakdown when I was nineteen.
“I never had a breakdown,” I said.
Mom began crying.
“You don’t remember.”
The room became silent.
When I was nineteen, I woke in a private clinic after what everyone called a severe reaction to stress.
Mom told me I had collapsed at college.
Doctors gave me medication.
Several weeks of memory remained missing.
“What happened?” I asked.
Mom twisted her hands.
“You were pregnant.”
The monitors seemed suddenly too loud.
“No.”
“You were only six weeks along. You called me from campus and said you wanted to keep the baby.”
“Who was the father?”
“You wouldn’t tell me.”
“What happened to the pregnancy?”
Mom covered her mouth.
“Diane said you lost it.”
“Diane?”
I had not met Ryan until I was twenty-four.
At least, I thought I had not.
Mom admitted that Diane had been the administrator of the private clinic where I woke.
She convinced Mom that I needed treatment and secrecy.
“She said the pregnancy ended naturally,” Mom whispered. “She said telling you would cause another breakdown.”
“And you believed her?”
“I was afraid.”
“You erased my child because you were afraid?”
Dad’s face hardened.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Mom looked down.
“You were fighting for custody of Emma. Diane said the court would give her to you if anyone learned she was pregnant.”
“I was nineteen,” I said. “There was no custody case.”
Mom began sobbing.
Diane had lied to her for years.
Then she returned three months ago, claiming my current pregnancy had triggered dangerous memories.
She told Mom the guardianship papers would protect the baby temporarily.
“In exchange for what?” Dad asked.
Mom’s silence answered him.
“How much?” I demanded.
“Twenty thousand dollars.”
I turned away.
Mom had gambling debts.
She sold a false statement about my mental health to pay them.
A detective entered carrying an evidence folder.
Police had searched Diane’s purse.
They found my bank card, prescription bottles, and a photograph taken at the private clinic eleven years earlier.
The photograph showed nineteen-year-old me asleep in a hospital bed.
Diane stood beside me.
Ryan stood beside her.
He had known me long before our supposed first meeting.
The detective placed another image on the table.
A newborn baby wore a bracelet labeled BABY CARTER.
“The photograph was taken seven months after your clinic admission,” he said.
My hands went cold.
“If that baby lived, where is my child?”
No one answered.
Then Dad picked up the photograph.
May you like
On the back, someone had written a name.
SOPHIE.
