Eleanor grabbed his arm. “We’re leaving.”

Dr. Hale suddenly recognized her voice. Eleanor had worked in administration at St. Catherine’s Medical Center on the night his wife died.

She denied knowing him, but he remembered her handing him his son’s death certificate. He had never been allowed to see the body.

“A mark proves nothing,” Eleanor said.

“DNA does,” Marcus replied.

The  hospital administrator and security arrived. Eleanor tried to dismiss Marcus as a grieving man inventing connections, but she lost her composure when the administrator mentioned archived records from St. Catherine’s.

While Julian and Eleanor were escorted outside, the hospital’s legal representative retrieved a scanned document dated thirty-six years earlier.

It carried Eleanor’s signature confirming the death of Marcus Hale’s infant son. Beneath it, however, someone had crossed out another entry:

Male infant transferred alive at 2:14 a.m.

A second notation appeared beside it:

New identification authorized by E. Vance.

Marcus closed his eyes as tears returned.

I looked at the custody agreement Julian had tried to make me sign while I was weak from giving birth. He and Eleanor had entered my room planning to leave with Noah before I understood what they were doing.

Now I understood why Eleanor had panicked at the sight of his birthmark.

This was not the first time she had tried to leave a hospital with another woman’s baby.

PART 3: The Son Eleanor Stole

Police stopped Eleanor near the elevators. She insisted that Marcus was confused by grief, but she could not explain why her signature appeared on the altered  hospital record.

Investigators soon located Ruth Mercer, a retired maternity nurse who had worked at St. Catherine’s thirty-six years earlier. When she saw Eleanor’s photograph, she began to cry.

Ruth confessed that Eleanor’s newborn daughter had died before reaching the hospital. Eleanor feared her wealthy husband would abandon her if she failed to produce a living heir.

That same night, Marcus Hale’s wife died after giving birth to a healthy boy.

Eleanor offered Ruth money for her mother’s medical treatment. Ruth switched the identification bracelets, registered the surviving boy as Eleanor’s  child, and helped create a false death record for Marcus’s son.

The boy became Julian Vance.

Ruth had kept a copy of the original nursery log. She also revealed that Eleanor had paid her for years through a company controlled by the Vance family.