CHAPTER -1 A rainy day

The rain was pouring heavily outside while inside a hospital room, the mother's loud screams were echoing on all the directions. Suddenly, the ECG system beeps and shows a decreasing heart rate of the patient.

"We are losing her, doctor," a nurse shouts while looking at the reduced heartbeat rate on the monitor nervously.

"No, I can't lose my child. Come on, push a little more. Try harder..." She slapped the mother's face without mercy to wake her up.

Within a few minutes, a child's cry was heard. The mother loses her consciousness after giving birth to twins.

"Doctor, one of the twins…"

"I know... let that be with the mother, anyways I only wanted the healthy child…" She took one of the newborns and walked away from that room with a wide smile on her face.

After he saw his wife coming out from the operating room with only one child in her hands, her husband, Mason asked,

"Grace, where is the other child?"

"Look at her, isn't she cute? Let us go! We are getting late for our flight." Grace said while ignoring his question.

Grace walked in the front while Mason looked at the closed door one last time before he followed her with heavy footsteps.

After they left, the mother woke up and looked around the room. Her eyes landed on the newborn who stared at her mother with her big round eyes.

"She is breathing! The baby is alive! But why did you not cry before, naughty?" The nurse came near the baby and lifted her. She checked her pulse and heartbeat. Everything appeared to be normal.

The newborn then started to cry and never stopped for a long time. The nurse brought her near the mother but she turned her face away. Left with no other option, the nurse took her to the NICU to take care of the baby's needs.

"Ava, take care of her. Can you believe it? She came back to life. It's a miracle! I will go to the nursing station to inform the head nurse about this good news…" Kara said excitedly to her fellow nurse.

When she was about to go, she noticed that the newborn held her dress tightly. Kara touched the newborn's cheeks and said,

"If you had cried earlier then she would have taken you too. Now, look at you being left behind. You naughty girl!! I am going to inform the head nurse. She will contact the doctor and they would come back for you."

She removed her dress from the child's tight grip and walked out of the room hurriedly. She ran into the nursing station while shouting,

"Mariah! The baby is alive. She cried when I lifted her! Come and look at her…"

"..."

There was silence! Mariah, who was the head nurse in the hospital, looked up once but did not say anything. She went back to doing her paperwork after giving her a glancing. Kara noticed a lack of enthusiasm. She was sure that Mariah never reacted in such a way before.

"Don't we need to inform the doctor about the baby being alive?" Nurse Kara asked Mariah with hesitation.

"Kara, did you not hear what Grace said before. They wanted only one healthy child and this child is just unlucky to be almost born dead at that moment. They are shifting abroad today and even if you call them, no one would pick the call. Is the mother not interested in taking this child with her?" Head nurse Mariah asked without looking at her.

"... Maybe not! Why don't we try to call Doctor Grace once? They might be..."

"Don't be naive, Kara," Mariah stated.

Realizing that she spoke harshly, Mariah took a deep breath and told her,

"OK! Fine...If you really want to give it a try, you can give her a call and see. This is the number…"

Mariah threw a card on the table and turned her chair towards her desk. Kara took the card from the table and walked towards the phone. The phone rang on the other end for a very long time before someone decided to pick the call.

"Hello, This is Grace's residence!" A maid responded to her.

"Hi, This is Kara. I am calling from the hospital. The baby…" Before she could even finish saying what she wanted to say, the call was disconnected.

She thought it might be due to the bad weather outside, that the call got disconnected. So she dialed once more but no one picked the call this time. She tried to phone them multiple times but still no luck. Looking at her sad face, Mariah stated sarcastically,

"They won't pick your calls. So stop trying to make a fool out of yourself. All rich people are like that. Once they get what they want, they won't care about anything else. Let us just consider that this kid is just unfortunate and leave her at an orphanage or foster care."

"But…" After holding the baby in her hand, Kara felt something tingle within her heart. She wanted to make sure that the baby would not end up alone, without anyone around her. So she thought for a moment and said,

"Why don't I try to talk to her mother once? She may take the baby with her if she knows she was left behind by the doctor..."

"I won't stop you this time as well but remember she did not do this for free. She took money from that family to give birth to these babies. If she is capable, she would have not sold her womb. So I doubt if she would be able to care for this baby."

At that moment, nurse Ava came rushing into the ward and said, "The patient who gave birth to the twins is in critical condition. She is having a seizure."

"Inform the doctor who is in the shift today immediately." The Head nurse ordered and rushed towards the room. But before she could even reach the door, the mother had already passed away.

A white shadow came near the baby who was kept in the incubator and caressed the baby's face. The baby smiled and lifted the hand in the air to grasp the shadow.

"I am sorry!" The shadow whispered and disappeared from the room.

The infant then went to sleep without any worry about the unknown future ahead of her.

Meanwhile, in a private jet on the city's airport, Mason asked Grace,

"Do we really need to leave this place?"

"How many times do I need to say, yes. Yes, I don't want to live here knowing that other people know our secrets. They would talk behind our back and our baby would come to know that I did not give birth to her." Grace replied and stared outside of the plane's small window.

Then she declared, "No, I won't let that happen to her or me. I love my baby and I would never let anyone or anything come between us."

"OK. But what about the other twin? I have been asking you for a long time but you just kept on evading my questions and did not give me any proper answer. Don't you think as the father, I deserve to know the details about my child?" Mason asked her while trying to not lose his patience.

"That's born dead as we expected. So what is the use of talking about something that is not alive? Moreover, we had already discussed this, that child will have nothing to do with our family. So, she is not your child. Look at our baby her. She is our only child and there is no one else. Do you understand?" Grace ordered him.

Mason wanted to correct her that it was she who expected that and not him. But he knew his wife's temper, so he controlled his urge to start a fight with her in the mid-air. Grace noticed his changes in his face and knew exactly what he wanted to argue with her. 

"Moreover, I don't want to discuss that depressing topic now. Our baby may get unlucky if you keep on talking about that dead child once again. So please in front of me or my baby, do not bring this subject about the other child ever again. Please, I beg you," Grace muttered and held her child closely.

She stood up from her chair. She then walked into the tiny bedroom in that private jet as she did not want to argue with her husband anymore. She laid the infant on the bed and sat next to her. She looked at her baby with motherly love and kissed her cheeks.

"You need to give her some more time to let her come back to earth. Right now, she is flying very high in the sky thinking that she will not fall on the ground. Later, just make sure when she falls, she doesn't get hurt much." Grace's mother Millie spoke with a sarcastic smile.