“What did Grandma do, Brooklyn?”
My daughter looked at me with tears gathering in her eyes.
“She opened the incubator.”
My blood ran cold.
“She what?”
“She didn’t take Rosalie out, Mommy. She just opened the little door.”
I immediately reached for the nurse-call button.
But Brooklyn continued.
“She put something inside.”
“What did she put inside?”
“I don’t know.”
My hands were shaking so badly that I could barely press the button.
“Then what happened?”
“She leaned close to Rosalie and whispered something.”
“What did she say?”
Brooklyn swallowed.
“She said, ‘You should never have been born.’”
I couldn’t breathe.
The nurse rushed into the room.
“What happened?”
I pointed toward Rosalie.
“Please check her. My mother came into this room during the night. My daughter says she opened the incubator.”
The nurse’s expression changed immediately.
She checked every line, every connection, every setting.
“Nothing appears disturbed.”
I wanted to believe her.
Then Brooklyn suddenly pointed beneath the chair.
“She dropped something.”
I looked down.
A small white envelope was lying underneath the chair where I had been sleeping.
My mother’s handwriting was on the front.
My name.
I picked it up.
Inside was a single photograph.
It showed me as a newborn.
On the back, my mother had written:
“I warned you what would happen if you ever had another child.”
My stomach turned.
Because I suddenly remembered something my mother had said to me six months earlier.
“You already have Brooklyn. You don’t need another baby.”
At the time, I had thought it was simply another cruel comment.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
PART 3 — THE RECORDING
Kevin came back from the cafeteria just as the nurse finished checking Rosalie.
I handed him the photograph.
His face hardened.
“Where did you get this?”
“Mom left it.”
He stared at me.
“Your mother was here?”
“Last night.”
His eyes immediately moved toward Brooklyn.
“What did she do?”
Brooklyn repeated everything she had seen.
Kevin’s jaw tightened.
“We need security.”
Within minutes, hospital security arrived.
The visitor logs were checked.
My mother had signed in under her own name.
But there was something strange.
She had entered the hospital at 2:17 a.m.
And according to the log, she had claimed she was visiting a different patient.
A patient in another wing.
The security officer showed us the camera footage.
My mother had walked directly toward the NICU.
She had stayed inside for eleven minutes.
Then she left carrying something.
“What was she carrying?” I asked.
The security officer zoomed in.
A small black handbag.
Kevin looked at me.
“Did she take anything from the room?”
“I don’t know.”
Then Brooklyn whispered:
“She took a picture.”
I turned toward her.
“A picture of what?”
“Rosalie.”
My heart dropped.
Security immediately contacted the hospital administration.
But before they could finish reviewing the footage, my phone rang.
It was an unknown number.
I answered.
A woman’s voice whispered:
“Don’t let your mother near that baby again.”
“Who is this?”
Silence.
Then:
“Ask her why Courtney’s baby was supposed to be born first.”
The call ended.
I stared at Kevin.
“What does that mean?”
He didn’t answer.
Because he looked just as confused as I was.
PART 4 — COURTNEY’S SECRET
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