The Baby Who Had Already Been Buried
Chapter 01 - The Baby Who Had Already Been Buried
At 1:17 in the morning, Adrian Cole walked into St. Anne’s Hospital carrying a sleeping baby no one could identify.
He was still wearing the black suit from a charity dinner when a taxi dropped him at the emergency entrance. The infant, perhaps six months old, was wrapped in a white blanket and had no diaper bag, no medical records, and no adult with her.
Adrian told Dr. Lena Morales that a frightened woman had placed the child in his arms outside the hospital parking garage. Before disappearing, she said only one sentence: “Take her upstairs before they find out she survived.”
Lena examined the baby. She was slightly dehydrated but otherwise healthy. A faded scar beneath her left ankle suggested a neonatal monitoring line had once been attached there.
Then Isabella Cole ran down the corridor.
Adrian’s estranged wife looked as though she had left a formal event without even finding her coat. She stopped when she saw the infant in his arms. Her face lost all color.
“Where did you get her?” she asked.
Before Adrian could answer, Isabella reached into the pocket of her champagne-colored dress and removed a plastic hospital identification card. It displayed the photograph of a newborn girl and the name EMMA COLE.
Their daughter.
Six months earlier, Emma had been declared dead only seventeen minutes after birth at St. Anne’s. Isabella had been heavily sedated. Adrian had been told the baby’s condition made viewing her body impossible. The hospital arranged a private cremation, and the tiny urn buried in the family cemetery had destroyed their marriage along with their future.
Now Isabella held the old identification card beside the child’s face.
The same unusually shaped birthmark appeared beneath both left ears.
Lena searched the hospital system. Emma Cole’s file existed, but every page after delivery had been deleted. The death certificate had been signed by Dr. Warren Keene, St. Anne’s chief medical officer.
Adrian stared at the baby. “Are you saying this is our daughter?”
Isabella’s eyes filled with tears. “Someone mailed me the card tonight with a note telling me to come here.”
Lena asked to see the note.
It read:
EMMA NEVER DIED. DO NOT LET KEENE TAKE HER AGAIN.
At the far end of the corridor, the elevator doors opened.
Dr. Keene stepped out with two security officers and a prepared custody order in his hand.
May you like
He looked at the infant, then at Adrian and Isabella.
“That child belongs to the hospital,” he said.
