I wanted the first nurse to have confused left and right.
I wanted the reddish patch to turn dark in an hour and make us feel ridiculous.
But deep inside, something already felt wrong.
Dana finally returned with a hospital administrator.
“There was another baby girl in the newborn assessment area around the same time,” she said.
Nolan stopped moving.
“Where is she?”
“With her parents.”
The word parents made my chest hurt.
The baby against me shifted.
I instinctively rubbed her back.
“Do they know what’s happening?”
“We’ve spoken with them.”
Then the door opened.
A woman in a hospital gown appeared in the hallway, sitting in a wheelchair.
A man stood behind her holding another bundled newborn.
The woman’s eyes immediately went to the baby in my arms.
Then she began crying.
“My mother made her a hat,” she said.
I didn’t understand.
“What?”
“A pink knitted hat. They put it on her right after she was born.”
She pointed toward the baby her husband was holding.
“When they brought her back to us, the hat was gone. She had one of those hospital caps instead.”
Her husband looked embarrassed.
“I told her someone probably changed it because it got dirty.”
“I thought I was imagining things,” the woman said. “I’m exhausted. I thought maybe I remembered wrong.”
Nolan stepped closer.
“Can I ask you something?”
She nodded.
“Would you check your baby’s left shoulder?”
The woman’s husband looked down at the infant in his arms.
Slowly, he pulled the blanket aside.
There it was.
A small dark oval just below the left collarbone.
Exactly where Nolan had described it.
He made a sound beside me that I had never heard before.
I couldn’t move.
Every part of me wanted to reach for that baby.
But I didn’t.
Not yet.
