An hour later, Detective Kim returned with grim confirmation.
“The newborn transferred to the NICU this morning,” she said, “was mislabeled. The infant is biologically unrelated to the parents listed. We believe your sister’s baby was taken shortly after birth.”
My head spun. “Taken by who?”
Kim hesitated. “We don’t know yet. But this isn’t the first time this hospital has been flagged. There’s an ongoing investigation into illegal infant transfers—private adoptions disguised as medical errors.”
Hannah sobbed into my shoulder. “I never agreed to anything. I never signed anything.”
“You didn’t,” Kim said gently. “But someone signed for you.”
It turned out a temporary staff member—posing as a nurse—had access to delivery rooms for less than twenty minutes at a time. Long enough to swap wristbands. Long enough to move a baby. Long enough to disappear.
By midnight, police found Hannah’s son.
He was alive.
In a private recovery clinic across town, already listed under a different name, with paperwork prepared for “emergency guardianship.” If Mark hadn’t noticed the details—if we hadn’t been pulled out of that room—the adoption would have been finalized within days.