"Push now, Sarah," the doctor said. "One more push."
Sarah pushed, and then there was silence. No cry. No small, furious wail. Just silence.
"Why is she not crying?" Sarah asked. "Why is my baby not crying?"
The doctor laid the small bundle in her arms. "I am so sorry, Sarah. She is gone. Your daughter was stillborn."
Sarah stared down at the tiny face. "Emma," she whispered. "Her name is Emma. Tom, look at her. She is perfect. Why is she not breathing?"
Tom took her hand. "Sarah, honey, look at me. She is gone."
She held Emma and counted the tiny fingers.
The funeral was on a Tuesday. The sky was the color of wet stone. Sarah held the little box through the whole service.
"You do not have to hold her the whole time," Tom whispered. "I can hold her for a while."
"No," Sarah said. "She is mine. I will hold her."
"She was ours," Tom said. "And we loved her, Sarah. We loved her all the way."
A week later, she told Tom she had to go back to work. "I cannot stay home," she said. "If I stay home, I will sit in the nursery all day."
She went back to St. Mary's, back to the night shift.
That June night, she could not bear the ward. She slipped away to the chapel to pray, or to cry, or simply to sit somewhere quiet. The chapel was dim. The candles burned low. And on a bench, wrapped in a blanket, was a baby.
Sarah stopped in the doorway. "Hello?" she whispered. "Is someone here?"
No one answered. The baby was small, asleep with one fist curled against her cheek. A folded note was tucked under the blanket. Sarah picked it up with shaking hands and read it.
"Please take care of her. Her mother can't."
"Oh, sweetheart," Sarah whispered. "Who left you here? Where is your mother?"
She picked the baby up, and the baby opened her eyes.
She carried the baby to the phone and dialed. The phone rang and rang. No one answered.
No one came. She stood there with a warm, living baby in her arms, and her own arms had been empty for two weeks. She thought of Emma, cold and still, and of this baby, warm and breathing.
"I will call in the morning," she told the baby. "First thing in the morning, I will call. But tonight, I am not leaving you here alone."
She wrapped the baby in her sweater and carried her out into the night. Morning came, and Tom found them in the rocking chair.
"Whose baby is that?" Tom asked. "Sarah, whose baby is that?"
Sarah told him everything, the chapel, the note, the phone that no one answered. Tom sat down across from her.
"We keep her safe," Tom said, "and we tell no one."
"Tom," Sarah said, "we cannot keep someone else's baby."
"If we tell anyone, they will take her away," Tom said. "And you will not survive losing another baby. I watched you bury Emma. I will not watch you bury yourself too. We keep her safe, and we tell no one."
So they named her Hannah. They told everyone she was born at home in Portland.
In 2003, she could not bear it anymore. She sat down at the kitchen table after Hannah was asleep and wrote a letter.
"Dear mother of the baby in the chapel," she wrote. "I found your daughter. She is safe. She is loved. I am sorry. I am so sorry."
She wrote about Emma and the phone that no one answered.
"What are you doing?" Tom asked in the morning.
"I wrote to her mother," Sarah said. "I want to send it."
Tom looked at the envelope. "Sarah, if you send that, they will come for Hannah. They will take her, and they will put you in prison. You will lose her forever."
"I already lose her every time I think about it," Sarah said.
"Then do not send it," Tom said. "Not like this. Not without a plan."
She never sent it. She hid it in the box in the attic, with the hospital bracelet and the note and the knitted cap. She told herself she was protecting Hannah. The truth was simpler. She was afraid of prison, and she was afraid of losing Hannah.
Now the kitchen was quiet. Hannah was gone. Sarah stood up, climbed the stairs, and took the box down from the attic. She opened it with trembling hands. There was the bracelet. There was the cap. And there was the letter, yellowed at the edges, still sealed, still unsent.
She held it to her chest. "I am sorry," she whispered. "Emma, I am sorry. Hannah, I am sorry. I have been sorry for twenty-five years, and sorry was never enough."
She thought of the woman in Seattle, Victoria Ashford, who had searched for twenty-five years. She thought of Hannah's face, furious and heartbroken, saying, "You stole my life from me."
Sarah picked up the phone. Her hands shook so hard she almost dropped it. She was not going to hide behind Tom. She was not going to hide behind another unsent letter. She was going to call Victoria herself.
Chapter 12: The Woman in Room 214