After They Stole My Life, Reborn I Called Another Man Dad Chapter 08

After They Stole My Life, Reborn I Called Another Man Dad Chapter 08

I didn’t sleep that night.

Instead, I dug through every single thing Ethan had left behind over the years.

At the very bottom of one cabinet, I found an old manila envelope. Someone had written across the

front:

[Keepsake from the day we brought the baby home.]

Inside was a roll of developed film and several photographs that had never made it into an album

I went through them one by one until I stopped at a picture taken outside the hospital.

It had to have been taken eighteen years ago by one of the nurses.

Ethan was holding me, fresh out of the hospital, his arms stiff and awkward. He was staring down a the baby in his arms like I was something fragile he was terrified of breaking.

The picture had been taken up close, and the ID band around my wrist was visible beneath the

swaddle.

It had our last name on it, along with a tiny string of numbers.

I stared at those four digits, and suddenly my heart started pounding.

Earlier that day, when the police had come by, I’d seen the copies of the original birth records Arthur had brought with him.

The ID band assigned to the Miller baby was 0396.

The one assigned to the Vance baby was 0417.

Which meant that when Ethan carried me out of that hospital…

I was already wearing the 0417 ID band that had originally belonged to the Vance family’s baby.

I called Arthur immediately.

The next morning, we went back to the hospital.

The hospital had changed names years ago, and most of its old paper records had been transferred to the archives.

It took nearly half a day, but eventually, one of the staff members found an eighteen–year–old

nursing incident report.

here was a small, almost insignificant note on it:

[Before the final discharge check, ID band 0396 was found loose on the newborn. The family stated that they had reattached it themselves and refused to have it reverified.]

The signature at the bottom belonged to my biological mother, Eleanor Miller.

And beneath that entry, one of the nurses had left another note:

[The mother’s older son was present in the room at the time.]

My hands slowly went cold.

Arthur stood beside me, his face completely drained of color.

The hospital employee helping us managed to track down the nurse who had been on duty that day.

She had been retired for years, but she came to the hospital that afternoon.

When she saw the old incident report, she stared at it in silence for a long time.

“I remember this.”

Eighteen years had passed, and most of her hair had turned white.

She took a breath before continuing.

“I remember it so clearly because another mother had just died that day. Her husband had stayed downstairs handling the arrangements after her death. He didn’t come upstairs until shortly before the newborn was discharged.”

“Before the baby could leave, I was supposed to do one final examination and verify the ID band.”

“Mrs. Miller kept telling me the baby had just fallen asleep and asked me to leave for a while. Her son was sitting beside the hospital bed too. I remember thinking it was strange. He was only a teenager, but he kept crouching beside the baby’s crib.”

The old nurse sighed.

“Later, I noticed that one of the ID bands had come loose, so I asked Mrs. Miller to let me verify it again.”

“She told me the nurses‘ station had already checked it and that the mistake was obviously on our

end because we’d messed up the shift change.”

was overwhelmed that day. And she knew the baby’s exact birth time and weight, so I believed

her and let her sign the report.”

She looked at me apologetically.

“I always thought it was nothing more than a routine nursing error.”