not mine.
My throat went dry.
“Where did you get this?”
Diana sat in the chair beside the bed without permission. “Ava, don’t embarrass yourself. You’ve been telling everyone how overwhelmed you are.”
“I said I was tired.”
“You posted that you hadn’t slept in three days.”
“I had just given birth.”
“You told Claire you were afraid you wouldn’t be enough.”
I looked past Diana to Claire.
Claire’s eyes filled quickly, but she did not speak.
The night before, during one of those lonely hours when the hospital corridor was quiet and every woman behind every door seemed to know what she was doing except me, Claire had visited. She had sat beside me and held my hand while Lila struggled to latch. I had cried. I had whispered, ashamed, that maybe Lila deserved someone less broken.
I thought Claire understood pain.
I did not know she was collecting mine.
Diana leaned toward the bassinet.
“No,” I said.
She ignored me.
She lifted Lila with the confident movement of someone who had practiced the scene in her mind. My daughter stirred, then opened her mouth in a silent cry that turned into a thin, furious wail.
Pain ripped through me as I tried to sit up.
“Put her down.”
Diana cradled Lila against her cream coat. The white blanket bunched under my baby’s cheek. Claire took one step forward, pink blanket raised, then stopped.
“Claire lost three pregnancies,” Diana said. Her voice softened, which somehow made it worse. “You know what that has done to her.”
My vision narrowed.
“I am sorry for Claire. I truly am. But that is my daughter.”
Diana’s eyes hardened. “A child needs more than biology.”
“She is not available for you to redistribute.”
“Do not use that prosecutor voice with me.”
The words landed heavily because they showed her first crack. She hated my job. She hated that I had kept my last name professionally. She hated that strangers listened when I spoke. At family dinners she introduced me as Mark’s wife, never as an assistant county prosecutor. If someone asked about my work, she changed the subject to Claire’s charity boards or Mark’s investment clients.
To Diana, I was an interruption in her family portrait.
To Diana, I had taken her son.
Now she wanted to take my child.
I reached for the nurse call button clipped near the rail.
Diana saw me.
Her voice dropped so low Claire looked up.
“Press that, and I will tell them exactly what kind of mother you are.”
My finger hovered over the red button.
Lila cried harder.
I pressed it.
A chime rang outside the room.
Diana changed instantly.
Her shoulders collapsed inward. Her face crumpled. Tears appeared so quickly I almost admired the discipline of it.
Two nurses rushed in. One was young, with dark hair pulled into a bun. The other was older, carrying the practiced calm of someone who had seen every kind of family drama a hospital could hold.
“Everything okay in here?” the older nurse asked.
Diana turned to them with Lila in her arms.
“Please help us,” she sobbed. “She’s confused. She thinks we’re stealing the baby.”
My mouth fell open.
The younger nurse looked from Diana to me. I saw exactly what she saw: a pale woman
