Warning!

The following chapter describes the loss of a child through forced adoption. It is quite a heavy one and was very difficult to write, but it is a necessary link in the chain (plot). I apologise for any upset caused at dealing with such a difficult subject. I hope I have done it as sensitively as possible? Thanks for reading.

17 years earlier

Dan

Daniel Green opened the front door and the silence hit him like a sledgehammer. He dropped off the bags at the bottom of the stairs and went back outside to the waiting Taxi. Taking a deep breath, he opened the back door and looked down at his wife's pale, drawn face. There was absolutely nothing he could say that would take away her pain and that thought killed him. He offered her his hand and a weak smile.

"Come on love," he said quietly, taking her hand.

She carefully turned her body and placed one foot on the pavement. He pulled her up gently, but not gently enough as he saw her wince in pain. Having spent the last of his money on ineffective painkillers, he wished he could take away her pain and endure if himself. But she wouldn't take the painkillers anyway, no matter how many times he begged. She told him that the pain was hers. It was all she had left to remind her of the healthy baby they had just lost.

They walked back to the house slowly. At the threshold, she hadn't wanted to enter saying she couldn't face the cold, quiet empty house, not when it should have been warm and noisy with the sounds of a crying, hungry infant. He too felt as empty and as destitute as she did, but he reminded himself he had to be strong, for her.

Dan took Lynne into their small living room and then built a fire in the grate and then made her some tea. Neither of them spoke as there was little left to say.

He sat opposite and watched as she stared off into the distance. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked away the time, every second, every minute, every hour further and further away from their son. He watched as she absentmindedly rubbed at her deflated stomach.

"I keep feeling kicks like he's still in here," she said in a small voice.

The midwife had warned them that many women felt phantom kicks after giving birth and that it was part of the natural process. Natural! There was nothing natural about the entire experience.

She continued to rub at her belly, just like she had done for the last nine months and Dan could hold his emotions in no-longer.

"I'm so sorry," he cried, rushing over to her. He kneeled at her feet and place his face in her lap.

"What have you to be sorry about?" she asked.

"I should have done something."

"Dan, there was nothing you could do. There is nothing we or anyone could do. Our baby boy was just simply too good for us and I...," she swallowed heavily, "I... am strangely proud of that. His SPR is so high that he won't ever have to struggle like we have. He won't ever go hungry or fear an unexpected knock at the door. He is better off without us."

Dan looked up at his wife. He had never loved her more than he did that second. 

"Let's get you upstairs to bed for a rest. You need to heal my love and for that you need sleep."

He took her hand and she followed him gingerly up the stairs. He helped her undress, helped her change her dressing and then pulled back the covers. She sat down and he unlaced her brown boots.

"Will you take a painkiller now?"

Tired and defeated, Lynne finally gave in and accepted the drugs. Exhausted beyond measure, she fell asleep almost immediately.

Dan watched her for a while. He still blamed himself. He should never have gotten her pregnant in the first place; he should have been careful.  If he had been, she wouldn't have had to suffer like this. Never again, he swore to himself.

As he went to head downstairs to unpack the bags, he stopped and stared at the door opposite. He knew he shouldn't go in there, not yet, but he couldn't stop himself. As he turned the handle and opened the door, his eyes went straight to the empty crib. He approached it slowly and reached out to touch the beautiful piece of light oak furniture. With scrolled bars and a carving of three little ducks on headboard. He remembered the day he had found it discarded on a street corner, just outside of the Top-5 zone. One of the legs had been broken making the crib unstable, but he'd brought it home and fixed it up while Lynne had been at work. Lynne had cried with joy when he'd revealed it to her. She had said it was the nicest thing they owned. Now it was the most unnecessary.

Dan looked down into the empty crib. The memory of 'them' wheeling away their son in the functional, clear-plastic crib would live with him forever.

"Your son is a healthy boy weighing 8lb 5 ounces and has had no ill effects from delivery. We've carried out all of the relevant tests and ratings I have to inform you that your son has an SPR of 97.6." 

Dan had looked over to Lynne, who looked to stunned to comprehend what the Consultant was saying.

"But how, how is that possible?" Dan had asked, desperately convinced the Consultant had made a terrible mistake.

"Well it looks as if your son has not and will not develop any issues with hearing which your wife has. Neither does he have any of your lung abnormalities. In fact, he is a great specimen and if I might say, will do well, once promoted."

"My son is not a goddamned specimen. You cannot take him from us, he is our son!" 

Dan was shouting now. His hands fisted and he made a move towards the consultant, but that was when he realised what the other two men in the room were for. They leapt towards him,  pushing him against the wall.

"Mr Green, I strongly urge you to calm down. This will only end badly for you if you do not." The  Consultant wrote another note on his clipboard.

Lynne, who had up until that point had remained mute, cried out to Dan.  "Please love, come here, please I need you." 

As Lynne's arms stretched out to him, Dan's body slumped into acceptance and the men released their hold. Feeling desperate, yet impotent, he shrunk back to Lynne who grabbed onto him, tightly.

"You have five hours from now to vacate your bed. If you wish to purchase some pain relief, you may do so on the way out." 

With those final words, the Consultant, the two men, the midwife and their son left Dan and Lynne's lives forever.

The painful memory and the crib before him became all was too much for him bear.  He now wanted to destroy the crib, to burn the damn thing down to ashes so he never had to see it again. But he knew Lynne wasn't ready for that. Instead, he fled from the room, quietly crept down the stairs and as he did so, he pondered the cruel twist of irony in which the crib he'd found hadn't been good enough for the top 5, yet the baby boy he'd envisioned asleep in the crib, was.

Lynne

The next day Lynne woke early and for a split second she felt okay.  But then the events of the previous day rushed over her,  stealing her breath and making her nauseous. She also had an unfamiliar physical ache too. Her milk had come in overnight and her breasts were now sore and engorged.  Her nightdress was soaked; another reminder of the child she had lost. Below, she could hear Dan moving around the kitchen, so she carefully made her way down the stairs, refusing to look in the direction of the little bedroom. She knew she was barely clinging onto her sanity and feared that room might just push her over the edge.

Just as she reached the bottom of the last step, there came a loud knock at the door.

"Dan, please will you answer that?" she called to him.  "I can't face seeing anyone."

Dan gently kissed her cheek as he walked passed and Lynne then scurried away into their small living room. A small fire had been lit, so she sat in chair closest to it, as she heard Dan open the front door.

"Mr Green?" 

The voice was sharp and well-spoken and it certainly wasn't a friend of theirs at the door.

"Yes I'm Dan Green. Who the hell are you?" 

Lynne had never heard her husband be quite so rude to a caller before.

"Mr Green, my name is Anne Holland from the Birth Relocation Service. I am sorry for arriving unannounced but I come on urgent business. May I come in and talk to you and your wife?"

Lynne gasped.  They had taken her baby, wasn't that enough? Why couldn't they just leave them alone.

"You what?" Dan near screamed. "You want to come into my house with another baby not even  twenty-four hours since you stole our baby boy?"

Dan had scared yesterday when he'd got angry and she honestly thought he was about to kill the Consultant. But the rage in his voice right now, was unparalleled.

"Dan," Lynne cried out. "Just let her in."

"Lynne, you don't understand. She has a baby with her!"

"I know, I heard, but it's freezing outside. Let her and the baby in."

She heard nothing for a moment, but then she was sure she heard Dan whispering to the woman and they were not words of kindness. The front door closed and she the tap of heeled footsteps on her wooden floor approach.

The living room door opened and Dan entered first, his face thunderous. He rushed over to stand beside Lynne, shaking his head, his lips moving wordlessly. Behind him, appeared a woman wearing a charcoal-grey suit which matched the hair she had tied up in a top bun. In her hands, she held a small wicker basket, carrying a small infant child, swaddled in a pale-pink blanket.

"Mrs Green, I am sorry to call on you at such a sensitive time." The woman spoke with the clipped quality of someone with an SPR in the lower 90s.

Dan went to say something back but Lynne grabbed his hand.

"I understand your son was promoted yesterday. That must be terribly difficult for you."

Lynne nodded back, unable to speak, her eyes now fixed on the child, just two-feet away.

"I will get straight to the point, to save you anymore upset. I have with me today, a twenty-eight hour-old baby girl," she said, gesturing to the infant lying at her feet. "She was born to a Top-5, however her SPR score was rated at Seventy-Two and her birth parents have decided to relocate her. Being a benevolent organisation, we wish to spare you any further grief and would very much like for you to adopt this child as your own. Right now."

"You...you lady, are unbelievable!" Dan exclaimed. "You think you can take our perfect little baby away one day and replace it with another just like that." 

"Shut up Dan, just shut up," Lynne cried out, as peered down at the small auburn- haired child in the basket. The baby was sleeping soundly, unaware of the tension in the room around her. Her her little rose-bud lips puckered slightly in a grimace, before the child's face relaxed again.

"Mr and Mrs Green, I know this is the most horrendous of circumstances. If I could return your baby I would, but I can't. Is there any way you could consider adopting this baby?"

Just then the baby woke and began to cry and begun gnawing hungrily at one it's hands. Lynne's heart shattered into a million tiny pieces at the sound. She wanted to say no, she felt that she would be betraying her dear baby boy if she was to replace him so soon, but her maternal instincts overrode her rationality. Without further hesitation, Lynne leaned over carefully and gently picked up the baby and cradled her in her arms. She opened the top two buttons of her night dress, raised up the baby and positioned her just beneath her breast. Lynne guided the baby's mouth to her nipples and the child instinctively began to suckle.

"I'll take that as a yes," the woman said. "Here is your adoption certificate and some other things for the baby when you are ready to look at them." The woman then stood up and then quickly and silently left the house.

Dan was looking down at Lynne, his eyes wide in shock, outrage, love, disgust.... a maelstrom of emotions.

"What do you think to the name Hannah?" Lynne asked, as tears fell down her face.