“I’m sorry, hon. I don’t. I’ve been working in labor and delivery now for almost forty years. I’ve cared for so many mothers and babies. So many.”
“I understand.” The chance that one of the nurses would remember her or her parents had been a long shot. “I was switched with a baby named Sophie.” She explained the facts of her birth and Sophie’s birth.
“How close together were you born?”
“Eighteen minutes.”
Joyce gave another whoeee. “Sophie would have been brought to the nursery, too. And neither mother would have had a chance to get a good look at the face of her child.”
“Do you think it’s most likely that the switch occurred in the nursery?”
“Yep, I do.”
“According to the hospital records, Lois Simpson, Bonnie O’Reilly, and Tracy Segura were working the same shift that you were. Do you remember those women?”
“Lois Simpson! Now, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. A long, long time. She and Bonnie were of a different generation, my parents’ generation. Lois was sweet and motherly. I remember that we celebrated her retirement with a cake decorated to look like an RV because she and her husband planned to travel around in one. Do you know what happened to her?”
“She passed away two years ago, at the age of eighty-six.”
“I hope she and her husband burned up the highways in their RV.”
“What about Bonnie O’Reilly?”
“Bonnie I knew better. Our shifts aligned often during my six years at Magnolia Avenue. Bonnie’s like one of those stern RNs in movies. Strict, but with a heart of gold.”
Outside, the trees of Leah’s backyard preened with autumn color. “Approximately how old would she have been at the time of my birth?”
“Fifty-ish, I’d say.”
“Do you remember anything else about her?”
“She was single. Oh, and she had at least one . . . maybe two children. That’s about all I recall.”
“And Tracy? Any memories of her?”
“Tracy was young. Always rubbed me the wrong way. She was uptight and pessimistic and since I’m the opposite of those things, I have a hard time with people like that. We worked together for a couple of years before she was let go.”
“Why was she let go?”
“Bad attitude. With supervisors and patients alike.”
“I’m hoping to chat with Bonnie and Tracy, too. Do you have contact details for either of them, by chance?”
“Hmm. When I moved south and started at a different hospital, I lost touch with both of them, but I’ll dig around for you. Back in the day, I bent over backward to keep my address book and my Christmas card list up-to-date. I might have contact details for them somewhere.”
“Thanks for checking for me. I appreciate it.”
“Look, I don’t think that I was the one who accidentally switched you with that other little girl,” Joyce said. “But if I was, I’m really sorry. I never would have wanted that for any of my babies. Never on God’s green earth.”
They said their good-byes.
Leah wasn’t the best at reading people, but Joyce seemed genuine. It could be, though, that Joyce’s jovial personality was a costume constructed to put people at ease. For all Leah knew, Joyce’s motives might truly be a dark river, and she’d switched the babies on purpose.
First thing the following morning, Leah found a text waiting for her from Joyce.
Score! 1990s address book for the win!
She’d included phone numbers and addresses for Bonnie O’Reilly and Tracy Segura, then closed with
Let me know if there’s anything else I can do! I’m a pack rat, so I might be able to find more stuff from my years at Magnolia Avenue Hospital in one of my closets. LOL!
Since a phone call at such an early hour wouldn’t be considered polite, Leah waited until her lunch break to dial the numbers Joyce had supplied for Tracy and Bonnie. Both calls ended in error messages announcing that the number was no longer in service. She tried them a second time, just to make sure she’d input the digits correctly. She had. Error messages again.
Inside her desk drawer, she located the cute package of notecards one of her students had given her. Bonnie and Tracy no longer used their old phone numbers, but they might still live at their old addresses. She’d write two notes introducing herself as a former patient, expressing her desire for a brief chat, and supplying her phone number.
She stilled, thinking. It might be best to address the letters to Bonnie and Tracy “or current resident.” Otherwise, should new people live at the addresses and receive something addressed to an old tenant, they’d almost certainly trash her letters.
On her way home, she’d drop them by the post office in time to go out with today’s mail.
Since Sebastian had returned to Atlanta early Monday morning, he’d gone through his days feeling each of the one hundred-plus miles separating him from Leah.
Talking to her on the phone wasn’t nearly as good as being with her in person, but it helped. She’d informed him that non-couples shouldn’t talk on the phone for more than thirty minutes per day. So he’d been using up all thirty of his daily minutes.
He’d also requested a week’s vacation from work. When the woman in HR had asked him when he wanted time off, he’d answered, “As soon as possible.” He needed uninterrupted days with Leah in Misty River.
On Wednesday evening, he was stretched out on the sofa in his apartment wearing track pants and an old Harvard T-shirt. He and Leah had been on the phone for twenty minutes so far. While they’d talked, he’d been imagining her in her stylish, uncluttered little house.
“Will you come see me this weekend?” He’d asked the same question for three nights in a row. They’d scheduled him to be on call Saturday and Sunday, which meant he couldn’t leave Atlanta. He was trying to be patient and not bossy, but he didn’t think it was working. He felt bossy about this subject, because he didn’t want to go two weeks without seeing her.
“No, I will not come see you this weekend.”
He palmed the soccer ball that lay on the carpet next to him and began tossing it over his head one-handed and catching it one-handed. “But you have four days off,” he pointed out. The school district was giving their staff and students a vacation Friday and Monday for fall break.
“Yes, but you’re not my boyfriend. And I’m not inclined to take weekend trips to visit male friends.”
“Right, but until now you haven’t had a male friend that you kiss. . . . Have you?”
She sniffed. “No.”
“I want to see you. Come see me.”
“You’re going to be on call! You probably won’t have time to spend with anyone.”
“I’ll have plenty of time to spend with you,” he vowed. “Try me.”
“Every time I contemplate leaving Dylan for the weekend, I envision a montage of party scenes from high school movies. Kids drinking beer out of red cups and making out on every piece of furniture.”
“You can leave him with the older couple you told me about.”
“Tess and Rudy?”