Chapter 3 - The Swap
The room began to spin.
"What do you mean, he wasn't mine?" I gasped, grabbing Dr. Aris's arm. "I saw him! They brought him to me right after the C-section. He had the same dark hair, the same..."
"When you were in recovery, the baby was taken to the nursery for routine observations," Dr. Aris explained, his voice low and hurried, as if he was afraid of being overheard. "According to the logs, your mother-in-law, Margaret, insisted on accompanying the nurse. She claimed she wanted to bond with her grandson."
"She hated him," I whispered. "She hated the fact that I was pregnant. She called him a mistake from the moment we announced it."
"Exactly," Dr. Aris said. "And during that window of time, the power grid in the east wing of the hospital suffered a temporary blackout. The security cameras went down for exactly four minutes. When the power came back, the nurse noticed nothing out of the ordinary. But the baby brought back to your room was the one we just lost."
"But... why?" My mind was racing, pieces of a horrifying puzzle starting to click together. "If that wasn't my baby... where is Evan? Where is my son?"
"I don't know," Dr. Aris admitted. "But we need to find out before Margaret’s lawyers get involved and shut down this entire investigation. If Margaret switched the babies, she did it for a reason. And if she poisoned the baby she brought back to your room..."
"She poisoned a baby she knew wasn't hers," I finished the thought, horror washing over me in a cold wave. "She wanted me to think my baby died. She wanted to break me, to destroy my marriage, to make me look like a failure who couldn't even produce a healthy child."
"And she wanted to get rid of the evidence of the swap," Dr. Aris added. "If the baby died of 'natural causes' or 'sudden infant death,' no one would ever run a DNA test. The truth would be buried forever."
I looked down at Noah. He was looking at me with wide, frightened eyes.
"Noah," I said softly, grabbing his shoulders. "When you saw Grandma put the medicine in the milk... did you see where she went before that?"
Noah thought for a moment, his brow furrowing. "She was talking to a lady in a blue nurse outfit. But she wasn't our normal nurse. She had a big red mark on her neck, like a strawberry."
"A birthmark," I whispered, looking at Dr. Aris.
Dr. Aris's face hardened. "Nurse Clara. She was working the nursery shift during the blackout. But she suddenly called in sick and left the hospital an hour ago."
"We have to find her," I said, trying to swing my legs out of the bed. The pain flared up, but I ignored it. "She has my baby. I know she does."
"Evelyn, you can't leave. You just had surgery," Dr. Aris warned.
"I don't care if my stitches rip open!" I screamed, tears streaming down my face. "My son is out there with a kidnapper and a murderer! I am not staying in this bed!"
Just then, my phone, which had been sitting on the bedside table, buzzed. It was an unknown number.
I snatched it up and pressed answer. "Who is this?"
A woman's voice, trembling and terrified, came through the speaker. "Evelyn? Is this Evelyn?"
"Yes! Who is this?"
"My name is Clara," the woman sobbed. "The nurse from the nursery. You have to help me. Margaret Collins... she lied to me. She told me the baby she was taking was her biological grandson from a surrogate, and that you were trying to steal him. She paid me fifty thousand dollars to swap them during the blackout."
May you like
"Where is my son?" I demanded, my voice cracking. "Where is Evan?"
"I have him," Clara cried. "But Claire... Claire didn't go to the police station. The police took a decoy. Claire is here at my apartment. She has a gun, Evelyn. She’s going to kill us both!"
