Nausea hit Tanya. In that moment she saw it all. Her helplessness, her bleak future. She couldn’t refuse, or she’d lose her job. And Dr. Hughes could make sure no one else hired her. How would she provide for her son? But the guilt she would bear if she went along! Tanya pictured the grief in Carla’s eyes. How could she let that young girl believe her baby was dead?
How could Bryson Hanley do this? The politician that everyone loved and trusted. What kind of monster was he? And how could Dr. Hughes ever agree to it?
Tanya pushed to her feet, throat nearly swelling shut. “I will not do it. You can’t make me!”
Fear and anger blackened Dr. Hughes’s expression. Tanya knew he was already in too far; there was no letting her off easily now. He closed the space between them in three steps, his face thrust in hers. “You will do it. And you will keep quiet. I can’t do this alone. I will inform Bryson you had to know. You’ll be well rewarded.”
She stared at him, stupefied, then laughed bitterly. “You think this is about money? How about morals? A clear conscience for the rest of my life. I won’t do it.”
A terrible stillness came over Dr. Hughes. He glared at her with the fierceness of a demon. “You will.” His words turned to gravel. “And here’s why. Because Bryson Hanley is the father of Carla Radling’s baby.”
Tanya froze. She ogled him, unable to speak.
“Yes, Tanya, it’s true. Bryson told me himself today. He brought Carla Radling to me in the first place — it all fits. I should have seen it before. So we are simply giving the baby to her own father. Which set of parents do you think can better raise that child? An unwed mother from the wrong side of town, or Bryson and Catherine Hanley? You want the baby uneducated and neglected, or loved and nurtured — and likely one day the daughter of the president?”
Tanya’s head shook back and forth, back and forth. She couldn’t believe this. Bryson Hanley — and sixteen-year-old Carla? It was too awful to imagine.
“I can’t. I just can’t.”
Dr. Hughes clenched his teeth. “Yes, you can. And you will. And let me make this very clear — if you walk out this door and spout off, Bryson and I will absolutely deny it. No one will believe you. You’ll be out of this hospital before the day is over, and I’ll make sure you never nurse again, anytime, anywhere. And that” — he stabbed the air with a finger — “is the end of this argument.”
Defeat weakened Tanya’s knees. She pulled her arms across her chest and stared at the floor, mind numb.
“Look at me now, and listen.”
Somehow she raised her heavy head. Dr. Hughes proceeded to tell her exactly what she would do. “Got that?”
She nodded dully.
The doctor took a deep breath, rearranged his face, and opened the door. Tanya followed like a robot. With each step away from that hated office, her mind churned. One word now to the head nurse on duty, and she could stop this. No one would believe her, but the stunning accusation would keep Bryson Hanley and Dr. Hughes from trying to carry out their plan.
But your career will be over.
Tears bit Tanya’s eyes. She focused on her shuffling feet. Wasn’t the doctor right? Carla’s baby would have a better home with the Hanleys. Carla was too young to be in labor — and too young to be a mother. She would mourn, yes. But she was young. She would get over it. When she was older and settled, she could have all the babies she wanted, while the Hanleys may never have another chance . . .
Outside Carla’s room, Dr. Hughes turned and stared at Tanya. She flinched, then slowly, knowing she would pay for this her entire life — nodded once more.
From that moment on, there was no turning back.
The timing was tricky. If they had not been in a small hospital, with Dr. Hughes’s word as gold, if others had questioned why he had so few professionals in attendance at the C-section, the events could not have occurred. But who would ever begin to imagine such an evil thing?
Somewhere along the way Tanya lost all ability to feel. Young Carla Radling, drugged by Dr. Hughes, succumbed to wooziness as she gave birth. Even so, with only half her faculties she alternately cried and laughed as the baby crowned, then launched from her in a smear of bloody fluid. “Where’s my baby, where’s my baby? Do you see her, is she okay?” Carla started to push up on her elbows to see.
“No, no, lie still now.” Dr. Hughes cut the cord and thrust the infant, silent and shaking, into a blanket held by Tanya’s waiting (and equally shaking) hands. “Hang on, Carla, I’m going to give you a little more medication now.” Quickly he injected a dosage of relaxant in Carla’s veins. She fell asleep almost immediately.
He performed the afterbirth procedures while Tanya stood back, gazing in Rebecca’s face. She was a quiet little thing, and so perfectly made. Fuzzy tufts of dark hair. Tears scratched Tanya’s eyes. “Rebecca,” she whispered behind the doctor’s back. “You are Rebecca.”
Dr. Hughes finished up and hit the door. “Watch the time and be there when I told you.” He jabbed a finger toward Tanya, perspiration on his face, his movements abrupt. Creases on his forehead revealed the truth — for Bryson Hanley the respected doctor had crossed a river whose other shore lay beyond his morals, beyond everything he stood for. And no bridge could ever secure his return. For the first time, Tanya felt a twinge of sympathy for him.
In the silent room, Tanya dropped two tears on Carla Radling’s still arm and wiped them away. The baby made no sound, blinking in stunned wonder at the world into which she’d been thrust.
After the agreed-upon time had passed, Tanya pulled the blanket over Rebecca’s head and hurried down the back stairs toward surgery, where Catherine Hanley’s C-section was being performed. Outside the door she carefully laid the baby down and put on a surgical mask and shoe covers. Then, Rebecca in her arms, she peeked though the glass window of the door. This moment, she thought, was when she would be caught. There was no reason this crazy plan should work. And if she was seen entering surgery with a newborn baby, the blame would be hers alone. Dr. Hughes would deny all knowledge of such unprofessional, unconscionable stupidity. She’d be fired on the spot.
Tanya had no choice but to make this work.
Dr. Hughes glanced toward the door and spotted her. Then he looked at Hanley.
The senator sat to the right of his wife’s head with a view of the door, the anesthesiologist on her left. A free-standing sepa- rator rose from Catherine Hanley’s chest up about three feet — a typical device that allowed a father to be present without having to watch the mother’s body cut open.
As the doctor reached into the womb to lift out the baby, the senator jumped to his feet in excitement and looked over the separator. “Can you see the baby? Oh, I just can’t — ” He pulled back, feigning instant dizziness at sight of the blood. “Oh. Oh . . .” His legs buckled.
Through the door, Tanya heard Dr. Hughes curse. “Don’t let him hit the floor and bust his head!” He jerked his chin toward the anesthesiologist and nurse. “Take him over to the corner where he can’t see and get him to sit down.” He pointed to the metal stool upon which Hanley had sat. “Everything’s stable here.”
With a flurry of chaotic movement, the two rushed to catch Hanley. He played his part well. They pulled him and the stool backward, then wrestled him — a near dead weight — into a sitting position. Made the good senator put his head between his knees. The nurse and anesthesiologist hovered over him, their backs to the operating table.
Hanley continued his act as, watched by no one but Tanya, Dr. Hughes cut the cord on the dead infant. Tanya unwrapped the blanket from Rebecca. Hughes turned with the baby, and at that moment Tanya entered. They switched infants and Tanya slipped out. The whole thing was over in seconds. Tanya almost wondered if she’d dreamt it all. Before she knew it, she was ripping off the surgical mask and shoe covers with one hand. She covered the delicate, dead child in the blanket still warm from Rebecca’s body and scurried up the stairs back to the labor and delivery floor. She cleaned
the baby up and carried her into Carla’s room, where the girl still slept. Laid the infant in a waiting bassinet. Then she tiptoed back out to the hall to call an orderly with the sad news that an infant needed to be transported to the morgue.
It was over. She’d done it. Dr. Hughes and Bryson Hanley had pulled off their horrific plan, and now she would be forever tied to them in guilt. The thought made her sick. Why had God allowed this? Why hadn’t He sent some interloper at just the right moment to stop them?
I don’t know how I’ll live with this.
Tanya needed to inform Scott that “his baby” had died. First, she stumbled to the bathroom and threw up.
By the time Carla awoke and demanded her baby, the infant had already been taken away. Tanya thought her very soul would crumble. How could she perpetuate the lie to this trusting child? The rush of fear and adrenaline behind her, Tanya was already facing the bleak rest of her life, each ticking minute adding weight to her remorse. But it was too late to turn back now, far, far too late.
When Carla became nearly hysterical, crying to see her dead child, Dr. Hughes needed to calm her down. At his orders, Tanya descended to the morgue herself and brought the infant to Carla, then stood outside the room’s closed door and listened to the young girl wail. The grief Tanya heard twisted a garrote around her heart. Despite her own agony she forced herself to stay and listen to every sob. She deserved to hear the pain.
Not until Carla quieted some time later did Tanya peek in to find she’d cried herself into an exhausted sleep.
Tanya slipped inside to take the baby. Before she left, she laid a gentle hand on Carla’s forehead and promised she would always keep watch over Rebecca.
As she carried the pitiful, dead infant away, Tanya passed an exuberant Bryson Hanley in the hall, regaling the beauty of his new baby girl to another nurse. His eyes grazed Tanya’s face and the wrapped bundle in her arms. He turned his back on them both as she walked by.
SEVENTY-TWO
When Tanya finished speaking, the room fell into the silence of a tomb.
Weights laid upon Carla’s closed eyes. The world floated out there, just beyond her body, but she couldn’t bear to look at it.
Strange, her thoughts. She could almost believe she had died from the shock and landed in some weigh station for homeless souls. Except that she felt the couch beneath her, the throb and chill of her ankle. Her throat was achingly tight, and her limbs felt like water. She focused on these sensations, knowing that to dwell on what she’d heard would turn her inside out.
But reality pushed through. And with it surged emotion that would rip her chest apart.
Rebecca was alive.
Brittany, the beautiful little girl she’d watched grow up on TV, now a teenager — was her daughter. Rebecca.
A hurricane of reactions raged inside Carla, even as she couldn’t move. She could only hang on and pray she wouldn’t blow away. Fury and elation, relief and shock. She was a mother. Her daughter lived.
She wanted to dance. She wanted to sing. She wanted to run to the end of the world and hide. How to grasp something so earthshaking? Her grief had exploded into a thousand jigsaw pieces, falling back to form a new, stunning picture.
Did she feel less pain — or more?
She had a daughter. But one who could never know or love her real mother, who was safe in the world Bryson Hanley had created for her. To learn the truth — all of it — would cost the girl everything she had ever known.
Somewhere beyond Carla’s scrunched eyes, Tanya sniffed.
That one, small sound plunged a hand into Carla’s blackness and pulled her out. Her eyes blinked open, still dry. She was beyond crying.
Numb, she looked at Tanya sitting on the floor, hugging both knees, head bent. Awaiting forgiveness.
Well, she could just wait — forever.
Carla focused on Leslie. The young reporter’s eyes glazed with disbelief, a slow dread of the truth’s repercussions whitening her face. They stared at each other until Leslie shook herself out of her stupor. Her face hardened with disgust.
“Did they pay you, Tanya?” she demanded. Accusation in her voice stung like a wasp.
Tanya’s shoulders slumped further, as if she couldn’t bear to confess any more. “Paul Jilke, Hanley’s campaign manager, sent me checks over the years. I never asked for it, and didn’t want it — but he warned me not to reject the money. As long as he paid and I accepted, they knew they had me under their thumb. I could live.”
“How much, Tanya?” Leslie wouldn’t let it go. “How much blood money did they pay you?”
“Enough for a house,” she whispered. “Enough to provide for my son when I fell into depression and couldn’t nurse anymore. I eventually pulled out of that. Went to work for a health insurance company. But it took a long time. Meanwhile, Dr. Hughes would never talk, Hanley knew that. The doctor retired in 1997. Three years ago he died from a series of strokes. After that only Bryson Hanley and I knew the truth.”
Leslie glared. “What about Rebecca? Did you ‘watch over her’ like you promised?”
“Yes. Terrin is a small town. I volunteered in Brittany’s school, made friends with her at a young age. I became like an older sister, taking her places, hanging out with her now and then as she became a teenager. She knew I was on duty during her birth. More than once I told her, ‘I was one of the first to see you.’ ” Tanya’s breath shuddered. “That made us closer. Bryson Hanley approved of our friendship. He’s so . . . crafty. He knew the more involved I was with his daughter, the more I loved her, the less likely that I would ever do anything to upset her happiness.”
“So why did you?” Carla blurted. “Why have you come now?”
Tanya raised her head and looked at Carla. Her eyes were red-rimmed and worn. Old. Her jaw flexed as if she prepared herself, and in that instant Carla knew there was more. Something to even further rock her world.
Tanya’s gaze drifted above Carla’s face. “It was such a chance thing. Brittany had to do a major project for science. She chose one in hematology — the science of blood. She studied the various blood types, learning the percentages of each within society, what mixtures cause what types. She looked at her own medical records and found her blood type is A. Then she researched the types of her parents. Her mother’s was O, the most common. Brittany had learned the variants of recessive and dominant types. She knew, due to recessive factors, two A parents could make an O, but two O’s could never make an A. Brittany assumed her father’s blood type would be the A. It wasn’t. Bryson Hanley is also an O.” Tanya’s eyes pulled back to Carla. “You must be the A.”
Carla’s face felt frozen. She drew her arms across her chest.
“Brittany was devastated. Three days ago she came to me, since she knew I used to be a nurse. Ironically, she thought her mother must have had an affair. How else could this have happened? She cried in my arms, begging me to find some way to scientifically explain it. I was tongue-tied. I wanted to lie just to soothe her, but couldn’t find a way at first.”
Carla’s throat cramped. Oh, Rebecca.
“Finally I said there had to be some rare occurrence in nature neither of us had learned about. We knew her father and mother were her real parents. But Brittany saw the lie in my eyes. Probably wasn’t hard — my face couldn’t have contained a drop of color. She stormed out, her faith in me shattered, crying that she’d make her mother tell her the truth.” Tanya drew a shaky breath. “I knew that would be terrible. To this day, I fully believe her mother has no idea what happened.”
Carla gripped the edge of the couch. Brittany — her Rebecca. A teenager’s world coming unglued, just as her own had done. The daughter, fated to suffer for the sins her mother had committed.
Tanya wiped a tear from her cheek. “I rushed to Bryson Hanley’s office, wanting to warn him. Somehow he had to talk to Brittany before she confronted her mother.” Tanya shook her head. “He wasn’t there. Jilke stopped me, demanding to know what was wrong. I
told him.”
Tanya’s hands lifted to cover her face. She hung there, shoulders rising with each breath. Carla stared at her, wondering what could possibly come next.
Tanya dropped her hands. “I thought Jilke knew everything. How could I not believe that? He was the one signing the checks all those years.” She locked eyes with Carla. “But he didn’t. That evil man thought he was paying me for my silence about how your baby died. That’s what Hanley led him to believe. Hanley would rather have Jilke think he had ordered the baby killed than to know the truth — that proof existed of his affair with you.”
Carla’s mind had gone numb. She couldn’t hear anymore.
Leslie leaned forward. “That’s why all of a sudden Jilke wants Carla dead!”
Tanya nodded miserably. “He was ready to kill me too. Maybe he would have, if he hadn’t feared that Brittany might suspect something, given the timing. He threatened me, had me followed. But Carla, if Jilke had known this years ago, I truly believe you would be long dead.” Tanya swiped the back of her hand against her cheek. “Today everyone knows about DNA. One test would definitively prove Brittany’s parentage. Jilke knows that. In 1992, it was different. DNA testing was new, and most people hadn’t heard of it yet. We knew about mixing of blood types, sure, but how many people learn what their parents’ types are? With no thought of DNA, the risk Hanley took then was not nearly the risk it’s become now.”
Rebecca. The terrifying thought spun through Carla. Rebecca was searching for answers, stirring the waters. Would Jilke find a way to kill her too? Maybe stage a car accident. A drowning. Would he do that, just to see Bryson in the White House?
No way, he wouldn’t.
Yes, he would.
No, no, no.
Nausea rose into Carla’s throat — and all the emotion locked inside rode with it. With a sudden sob she jerked up, pushed off the couch. She jumped to her feet. Pain knifed her ankle, but she didn’t care. She flailed her arms, raked fingers through her hair. The world tilted, and she didn’t know where to go, how to get off. Only that she had to move. “I won’t let him . . . He’s not . . . He can’t hurt Rebecca!”
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