Chapter 6 - The Woman in the Green Scrubs
The ledger had not been found by Robert.
It had been given to him.
Three months earlier, an eighty-two-year-old retired nurse named Margaret Ellis contacted him after seeing his photograph in a hospital charity newsletter.
She asked him to meet her at a small church on the edge of the city.
Margaret had worked at St. Matthew’s during the storm when Nathan was born.
She was not the nurse who carried the baby away, but she had been in the neonatal unit that night.
For twenty-nine years, she had lived with what she witnessed.
Charles Vale and attorney Malcolm Price used the storm as cover to move three newborns out of the hospital.
One of those children was Nathan Wright.
The infants were transferred through a private ambulance service. Their records were altered, and their parents were told the babies had died.
Margaret tried to report the crime.
Charles Vale threatened to accuse her of stealing medication. She was a single mother with two young children. Afraid of prison and losing her nursing license, she remained silent.
But she secretly copied pages from Vale’s ledger.
Years later, after Vale’s death, Margaret found the original ledger hidden inside an old cabinet that had been sent to a hospital storage facility.
She stole it.
Then she gave it to Robert.
“Why didn’t you go to the police?” Robert had asked her.
“Because Leonard Vale has friends everywhere,” she replied. “And because I needed to give it to the one person who would never stop.”
Robert placed the ledger in a safe-deposit box and contacted a federal investigator. Before the investigator could obtain a warrant, Margaret suffered a stroke.
Without her sworn testimony, officials requested more time to authenticate the ledger.
Robert waited.
Then Joanna’s baby was born.
Now, standing in the hospital room, Robert told Daniel and Joanna the entire story.
Daniel stared at him in disbelief.
“You had the ledger for three months.”
“Yes.”
“My original identity could be inside it.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t contact me?”
“I did not know who Nathan Wright had become. The ledger listed the couple who paid the attorney, but parts of the page were damaged. I could only read the surname Hale and the first letter of the city.”
Daniel turned toward the rain-covered window.
Robert continued.
“I searched adoption records for every Hale family in six states. There were hundreds.”
Daniel pulled out his phone.
“I’m calling my parents.”
Robert nodded.
“They deserve to hear this from you.”
Paul and Rebecca arrived at the hospital shortly after midnight.
Rebecca rushed directly to Daniel and held him so tightly that he could barely breathe.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I’m so sorry.”
Daniel hugged her back.
“You didn’t steal me.”
“We should have asked more questions.”
Paul looked older than Daniel had ever seen him.
“We wanted a child so badly that we believed what we were told.”
Robert stood near the wall, uncertain whether he belonged in the room.
Rebecca noticed him.
“You’re Dr. Wright.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Are you Daniel’s father?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Rebecca approached him.
“We never knew.”
“I believe you.”
She looked surprised.
Robert continued.
“The ledger records payments to Attorney Price, not to you. It describes you and your husband as prospective parents who believed the mother was deceased.”
Paul covered his face.
“I paid that man twenty thousand dollars.”
“You paid what you believed were legal and medical fees.”
Robert looked at Daniel.
“Your parents did not take you from me.”
The word parents could have caused pain.
Instead, Robert spoke it carefully.
Paul and Rebecca were Daniel’s parents.
Nothing could erase twenty-nine years of love.
Daniel’s voice broke.
“If the DNA test says you’re my biological father, what happens then?”
Robert answered without hesitation.
“Nothing you do not choose.”
“You won’t ask me to change my name?”
“No.”
“You won’t expect me to call you Dad?”
“No.”
“You won’t treat them as if they replaced you?”
Robert looked at Paul and Rebecca.
“They raised the child I spent my life hoping was safe. I could never repay them for that.”
Rebecca began crying.
Daniel looked down at his newborn son.
For the first time since entering the room, some of the anger left his face.
A quiet knock sounded at the door.
A nurse in green scrubs entered.
She was one of the nurses who had witnessed Robert recognize the birthmark.
“Dr. Wright,” she said, “there are two men searching the old records department.”
May you like
Robert looked at Daniel.
Leonard had taken the bait.
