Let It Be Me by Becky Wade (top young adult novels .TXT) 📕

calling. I just now saw that you sent me a message a while back on LinkedIn saying that you were born at Magnolia Avenue Hospital during the years when I worked there.”

Leah’s forward movement came to a swift stop.

“Here’s hoping you weren’t one of the babies that I dropped on their heads.” Scratchy laughter burst from Joyce. “Just kidding. I didn’t drop any on their heads. Well, not many anyway.” She chuckled. “You left your phone number and invited me to call so I’m doing just that. Sorry I missed you. Feel free to call me back at this number.”

One of the nurses who’d cared for her as a newborn had called her!

The other two nurses, Bonnie and Tracy, had remained elusive. Leah’s continued attempts to locate Bonnie online had failed. Tracy hadn’t responded to her Facebook message.

Joyce Caffarella. Joyce was the one with the solid frame and the spiky platinum hair. Had she been fresh out of nursing school the year she’d started the first job she’d listed on LinkedIn, her age would now be hovering just above sixty.

Leah slung the messenger bag filled with work that needed grading into her Honda, then headed home. Dylan was still at practice, which meant she could place a return call in private.

Once she’d dumped her things on the kitchen counter, she took a few moments to gather herself and whisper a prayer. Gazing out the sliding doors that led to her back patio, she connected a call to Joyce.

Joyce answered almost instantly. Leah introduced herself and spent a few moments exchanging pleasantries with the outgoing older woman. There was no easy way to segue from thanks for taking the time to return my call to I was switched at birth on your watch, but Leah managed to convey the basics of her story.

“What?” Joyce squawked. “No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

“I’ve heard switched-at-birth stories, of course, but that type of a mistake is actually really, really uncommon. It’s blowing my mind to think that this happened to you during one of my shifts.”

“It’s true that cases like mine are extremely rare, but maybe not quite as rare as we thought a few years ago. Then, no one could easily test their DNA, so an unknown number of cases likely went undiscovered. Now we can inexpensively submit our DNA to a lab. I’ve watched interviews of two other people who discovered they were switched at birth the same way that I did.”

“Jiminy Cricket!” Joyce made a whoeee sound. “You said you were born twenty-eight years ago?”

“Yes, I turned twenty-eight this past February. By chance, do you remember anything about me? Or my parents, Erica and Todd Montgomery? Or my biological mother and father, Trina and Jonathan Brookside?”

“I’m sorry, hon. I don’t. I’ve been working in labor and delivery now for almost forty years. I’ve cared for so many mothers and babies. So many.”

“I understand.” The chance that one of the nurses would remember her or her parents had been a long shot. “I was switched with a baby named Sophie.” She explained the facts of her birth and Sophie’s birth.

“How close together were you born?”

“Eighteen minutes.”

Joyce gave another whoeee. “Sophie would have been brought to the nursery, too. And neither mother would have had a chance to get a good look at the face of her child.”

“Do you think it’s most likely that the switch occurred in the nursery?”

“Yep, I do.”

“According to the hospital records, Lois Simpson, Bonnie O’Reilly, and Tracy Segura were working the same shift that you were. Do you remember those women?”

“Lois Simpson! Now, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. A long, long time. She and Bonnie were of a different generation, my parents’ generation. Lois was sweet and motherly. I remember that we celebrated her retirement with a cake decorated to look like an RV because she and her husband planned to travel around in one. Do you know what happened to her?”

“She passed away two years ago, at the age of eighty-six.”

“I hope she and her husband burned up the highways in their RV.”

“What about Bonnie O’Reilly?”

“Bonnie I knew better. Our shifts aligned often during my six years at Magnolia Avenue. Bonnie’s like one of those stern RNs in movies. Strict, but with a heart of gold.”

Outside, the trees of Leah’s backyard preened with autumn color. “Approximately how old would she have been at the time of my birth?”

“Fifty-ish, I’d say.”

“Do you remember anything else about her?”

“She was single. Oh, and she had at least one . . . maybe two children. That’s about all I recall.”

“And Tracy? Any memories of her?”

“Tracy was young. Always rubbed me the wrong way. She was uptight and pessimistic and since I’m the opposite of those things, I have a hard time with people like that. We worked together for a couple of years before she was let go.”

“Why was she let go?”

“Bad attitude. With supervisors and patients alike.”

“I’m hoping to chat with Bonnie and Tracy, too. Do you have contact details for either of them, by chance?”

“Hmm. When I moved south and started at a different hospital, I lost touch with both of them, but I’ll dig around for you. Back in the day, I bent over backward to keep my address book and my Christmas card list up-to-date. I might have contact details for them somewhere.”

“Thanks for checking for me. I appreciate it.”

“Look, I don’t think that I was the one who accidentally switched you with that other little girl,” Joyce said. “But if I was, I’m really sorry. I never would have wanted that for any of my babies. Never on God’s green earth.”

They said their good-byes.

Leah wasn’t the best at reading people, but Joyce seemed genuine. It could be, though, that Joyce’s jovial personality was a costume constructed to put people at ease. For all Leah knew, Joyce’s motives might truly be a dark river, and she’d switched the babies on purpose.

First thing the following morning, Leah found a text waiting for her from Joyce.

Score! 1990s