Where is she?
“With their parents.”
Before I could ask another question, the door opened.
A woman in a hospital gown was sitting in a wheelchair.
Her husband was behind her, holding another newborn.
The woman looked at the baby she was holding in her arms.
Her eyes instantly filled with tears.
“I told you something was wrong,” he whispered.
Her name was Marissa.
“What did you notice?” I asked.
“The hat.”
Caleb frowned
“My mother knitted a pink hat for my daughter. They put it on her immediately after she was born. When they brought her back, she was wearing the hospital hat.”
Her husband looked down.
“I told him that someone had probably switched it.”
“I thought maybe I remembered it wrong,” Marissa whispered.
Caleb se puso de pie lenta
“Can you check his left shoulder?”
Nobody moved
Then Marissa carefully lowered the blanket covering the baby her husband was holding in his arms.
There it was
Near the left collarbone.
A small, dark oval.
Caleb made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob.
“There.”
All my instincts urged me to approach that child.
But Denise stopped everyone.
“We don’t exchange babies based solely on physical brands.”
“Good,” I said
Marissa nodded
“Try them.”
The hospital immediately performed urgent tests to determine paternity.
Until the results came back, both babies remained where they were, under supervision.
Those hours were unbearable.
I hugged the sleeping baby and wondered if I was comforting Marissa’s daughter while she hugged mine.
Finally, Denise returned
His expression told me everything.
“The results are conclusive.”
The baby she was holding belonged to Marissa.
The child with the dark birthmark was ours.
After ten years of simply praying to be able to bring a baby home, it had never occurred to me that I could be born healthy only to almost leave the hospital with someone else.
Under supervision, we exchanged our daughters.
When I finally returned to my chest, I stared at her face.
Then I noticed the small dark spot near her left collarbone.
I touched it gently.
Caleb leaned forward
“Digital footprint”.
I cried
He too
Then Caleb looked at the administrator.
“Explain the identification bands.”
That answer turned out to be even more disturbing.
During the evaluation period, which required a large influx of students, the girls were mistakenly placed in the wrong cribs.
Subsequently, replacement identification bracelets were printed using the records attached to those cribs, instead of individually matching each baby with its mother.
