They Left Me to Die, So I Came Home Undefeated novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Baby A

I dressed in the gray light with my back to the bed.

Tancredi dressed too, and he didn't say anything.

When I reached the door he put his hand flat against it, above my head.

"If you tell me to stay out of it," he said, "I'll stay out."

"I'm not going to tell you that."

I opened the door.

Corrado stood on the landing with his arms hanging.

He had not slept either.

Behind him, on the iron stairs, was the nurse in the gray cardigan from my grandfather's room.

She held a shopping bag in front of her with both hands.

Teo stood a step below her, looking from my face to Tancredi's and back, and he had the sense not to say a word.

"Come inside," I said.

We sat in the office.

The nurse took the chair in front of the desk and kept the shopping bag on her knees.

She was about sixty, with short white hair and a lined, plain face.

She looked at her hands for a moment.

"I've worked for your grandfather for nine years," she said. "Before that I spent twenty-two years on the maternity ward at Saint Barnabas."

"The same hospital," I said.

"The same ward. Nights."

Nobody moved.

"I was on the night you were born," she said. "I tied your tag myself."

I put my hand on my bag, on the inside pocket.

"Your mother was exhausted," the nurse went on. "She had asked me to tie your wrists herself, so she could see them. Two girls, one tag for each. Baby A and Baby B."

"Which was which?"

"You were A. Six forty-one in the morning." She looked up. "Your sister was B, at six fifty-two."

I opened my bag.

I took out the small plastic band and laid it on the desk between us.

It was yellow and soft, and it had been through five winters in a gym bag.

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