Chapter 3 - The Baby I Was Told I Lost
Anthony did not take me to a warehouse or a dark mansion guarded by armed men.
He took me to a private medical office above an ordinary building on the Upper East Side.
That frightened me more.
Everything was controlled.
Prepared.
A female doctor arrived within twenty minutes.
So did an attorney.
Anthony’s men remained outside the room.
June refused to leave my arms.
When I tried setting her beside Anthony, she began shaking so violently that the doctor told me to stop.
“Let her remain where she feels secure.”
Anthony stood near the window, wet Manhattan lights shining behind him.
“Tell me about Switzerland,” he said.
I looked at him sharply.
“How do you know about that?”
“Because June was born there.”
My knees weakened.
The doctor guided me toward a chair.
I sat with June curled across my lap.
Three years earlier, I worked as a junior financial analyst for Orsini Biomedical, a European medical-investment company with a small New York office.
I was twenty-eight, newly divorced, and pregnant after a brief relationship with a man who disappeared as soon as I told him.
At seven months, my employer offered to send me to Switzerland for a short-term assignment.
The package included private prenatal care.
I accepted because the salary would have allowed me to take proper maternity leave.
Everything changed after I arrived.
My medical appointments became increasingly controlled.
Doctors told me the baby had complications.
Then, during my thirty-sixth week, I was admitted after sudden bleeding.
I remembered medication.
Bright lights.
A masked doctor saying the baby’s heart rate was falling.
When I woke, a woman named Dr. Helena Weiss stood beside my bed.
She said my daughter had been stillborn.
I asked to see her.
They said it would be too traumatic.
I asked for documents.
They gave me a sealed certificate in German and told me arrangements had already been handled.
I returned to New York alone.
Within a month, Orsini Biomedical closed its American office.
My insurance records vanished.
The Swiss clinic stopped answering.
No one believed me when I said parts of the experience felt wrong.
Grief made people accept confusion as normal.
I spent three years trying not to think about the daughter I had never touched.
Anthony listened without interruption.
When I finished, he removed the old envelope again.
This time, he handed it to me.
Inside was a photograph of a woman lying unconscious in a hospital bed.
Me.
My hair damp against the pillow.
My face turned partly away.
A newborn rested against my chest.
My hands began trembling so violently that the photograph rattled.
“I never saw this.”
“I know.”
“Who took it?”
“A nurse.”
I looked up.
Anthony’s face had become unreadable.
“How did you get my baby?”
His jaw tightened.
“I was told she belonged to someone else.”
He explained that his wife, Isabella, had been unable to carry a pregnancy after years of treatment.
Three years earlier, one of Anthony’s private physicians contacted him about a confidential adoption opportunity in Switzerland.
The infant’s mother had supposedly died during childbirth.
There were documents.
Medical records.
Consent forms.
A legal process handled through intermediaries.
Anthony accepted because Isabella was desperate for a child.
They named the baby June.
Six months later, Isabella died in a car accident.
Anthony raised June alone.
“You believed her mother was dead?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“And you never questioned why the documents were hidden?”
His face darkened.
“I questioned everything. I received answers supported by people I trusted.”
“People who worked for you?”
“People who feared lying to me.”
“Apparently not enough.”
The words struck him.
Good.
He deserved them.
June shifted in my lap and touched my face with both hands.
I looked down at her.
My child.
Perhaps.
The possibility hurt too much to accept without proof.
The doctor placed a sealed testing kit on the table.
“A rapid relationship analysis can provide a preliminary result tonight,” she said. “A formal laboratory test will follow.”
Anthony looked at me.
“It is your choice.”
For the first time since he entered Silver Rowan, he was asking.
May you like
I pressed my lips to June’s hair.
“Do it.”
