Ethan hurried down the corridor toward Room 314, bouquet in hand. He could still see her tired smile and hear their baby’s first tiny cry. Antiseptic clung to the air, but despite it, his joy soared—he was coming home to his family and going to celebrate with them.
The door sat ajar. Inside a rumpled bed, a dark monitor, and an unused IV greeted him. The bassinet was empty too. No soft breaths of a newborn. Only the curtain swaying gently in the still, stale room.
“Maybe a checkup?” he muttered, confused, stepping into the hall. A nurse, hurrying along the corridor, glanced at the empty room, then at him, her expression tightening with anxiety. Ethan’s pulse thundered inexplicably. He knew whatever she was about to say wouldn’t be simple, and it wouldn’t be good news…
The early morning air was damp, the street still half‑asleep as Ethan guided Lina into the car. Her hand clutched his, knuckles white with pain. They’d rehearsed this trip for weeks, but now the world had narrowed to breath, contraction, and the blur of hospital lights ahead.
In the delivery ward, nurses moved like focused shadows. Beads of sweat traced Lina’s temples as she gritted against each wave of pain. Ethan stayed at her side, murmuring comfort, counting her breaths. The monitor beep matched her labored rhythm. Hours blurred into moments, until a sharp cry split the thick air.
He stared at the tiny bundle placed in Lina’s arms—pink, impossibly small, and alive. Lina’s eyes were glassy but smiling, her fingers curling protectively around their daughter. For a moment, the room’s clinical chill vanished, replaced by the hum of something fragile, perfect, and utterly new. Ethan thought his chest might burst.
Later, in recovery, Lina drifted in and out of light sleep. Their daughter lay swaddled beside her, shifting quietly. Ethan wanted to mark the moment somehow, do something more than just sit there holding her hand. He thought of flowers. It would be a splash of color against hospital white. “I’ll be right back,” he whispered.
The florist across the street wrapped white lilies and pale pink roses in soft tissue. Ethan imagined Lina’s sleepy smile when she saw them. He took his time crossing back, stopping to grab a coffee from the vending nook, savoring the strange, buoyant calm after hours of raw intensity.
Room 314’s door stood ajar when he returned. He nudged it open, bouquet first. The bed was empty, sheets creased, still holding Lina’s form. The bassinet was empty. A half‑full cup of water perched on the table beside her unopened card. The curtain swayed slightly in the still air.
His first thought was a routine checkup. He scanned for the chart, for a blanket, anything. Nothing. Heart pounding, he stepped into the hallway, bouquet crumpling in his grip. The nurse came so swiftly that he was startled. “Excuse me—my wife, Lina—she’s not in her room.”
The nurse’s gaze shifted toward the open doorway, then back to him, anxiety etched in every line of her face. “We can’t find the patient. We were just about to call you,” she said carefully. For a moment, Ethan just stared, the words struggling to take shape in his mind, refusing to assemble into something that could be true.
Ethan’s voice rose. “How could she just walk out? She was exhausted—barely able to stand. And with a newborn?” His anger burned, but beneath it boiled something darker: fear. Every passing second felt like lost ground. “You should’ve been watching her,” he snapped. A few petals of the bouquet fell near his feet.
A nurse shook her head, guilt clouding her features. “She didn’t say anything. One moment she was in bed…the next she was gone.” Ethan felt heat crawling up his neck. She is tired, vulnerable, and not strong enough to care for herself, let alone their baby. Where was she going?
He reached for his phone, dialing her number. The ringtone buzzed faintly from inside the room. Her mobile sat on the side table, screen dark. She’d left it behind! That wasn’t Lina—not the woman he’d kissed an hour ago. This was someone…unbalanced. Someone running without a plan.
Postpartum depression? The thought came unbidden, absurd in its suddenness. There had been no warning, no shadows in her smile. Yet, how else to explain this? He pictured her drifting down corridors, clutching their daughter. Coils of panic tightened around him—was the baby cold? Hungry? Was she safe?
A doctor approached, voice low. “We checked. She didn’t speak to anyone. CCTV shows her slipping out through the west exit—baby in her arms. No staff noticed.” The words pierced through him like glass. A hidden escape. Like she’d been planning…or desperately reacting in the moment.
Ethan’s mind spun. Outside. Alone. Lina, bleeding, shaky on her legs. A fragile newborn pressed against her chest. Cars. Strangers. The unpredictability of a city morning. Fear gnawed at him—what if she collapsed? What if she handed the baby over to someone? What if they were already far away?
He gripped the doctor’s arm. “Call the police. Now.” The word “missing” hung between them like a curse. Nurses scattered, one already on the phone. Ethan’s heart thudded in his ears. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty—that’s all it would take to vanish completely. Time was ebbing away.
Somewhere out there, Lina was moving steadily farther from him, from safety, from sense. Ethan felt the space between each second stretch like a fracture. With every breath, he imagined the things that could go wrong. He had no plan or warning—and now, there was no room for mistakes either.
Ethan sat in the cramped waiting room that the police had taken over. The bouquet lay discarded somewhere along the way. Two officers faced him, notebooks ready. “Start from the beginning,” one said. His jaw clenched. They should be out there, finding her—not prying into every second of the morning from him.
“I already told you,” he shouted. “She was in bed. I went for flowers. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen. When I came back—nothing.” The younger officer’s pen scratched the paper deliberately, unhurried. Outside, a radio crackled, and Ethan thought of precious minutes slipping away.
“Any arguments? Tense moments before the birth?” the other officer asked. Ethan stared. “She just gave me our daughter. Do you think that’s when people argue with each other?” His voice was sharper than he meant. But each question felt like an accusation. It seemed to him like they were building a case, not mounting a rescue.
A uniformed constable entered, holding Lina’s phone. “We went through recent activity,” he said, passing it to the detective. The screen glowed with unfamiliar numbers, threads of unanswered calls, and short, urgent texts from the same source. Ethan leaned forward, unease creeping up his spine. “Who is that?”
There was no contact name or photo. Just words: We need to meet. I must see her, the baby today. Time’s running out. Please. Ethan swallowed hard. “I don’t know this number. I’ve never seen it before.” His mind searched for family, friends, anyone who could end sentences that way. But his mind drew a blank.
“You’re sure?” the detective pressed. “Positive,” Ethan said. The officer made a note, not meeting his eyes. “Then we need to consider—maybe she left willingly, to meet this person.” The suggestion sliced clean through him. Willingly? Lina, hours after childbirth, limping down hospital corridors? It made no sense!
One hour ago, he’d been telling himself their child had his nose and her eyes. He’d been planning the first photo they’d send his family. Now it was all police jargon, evidence bags, unanswered calls. He thought of the vacant bassinet, the stillness in that room. A different kind of silence clung to him now.
“Run the number!” Ethan’s voice was raw. “Find out who it is.” But the detective’s calm was infuriating. “We’re on it. These things take time.” Time. That word again. Heavy, choking, slipping through his hands. If Lina were with someone, why not tell him? Why vanish without a trace?
He imagined her outside, phone gone cold on the bedside table, baby pressed against her chest. Walking to meet a stranger. Or worse—someone she knew, but he didn’t. His mind twisted through names and faces. Every blank space felt like a trap waiting to be sprung.
The detective pushed back his chair. “We’ll circulate her photo and the number. Stay close.” Ethan stood too, hands gripping the table. “No—I’m coming with you.” Because sitting here with unanswered questions was worse than running the streets, it was worse than imagining each possible ending.
As they stepped outside, the hospital’s automatic doors hissed open. Morning light spilled in, too bright and clean for the hollow weight in his chest. Somewhere, in the endless unwatched corners of the city, Lina was moving farther away—and every question the police asked only seemed to spur on his worst fears.
The detective mentioned a home search—“Just in case she went there.” Irrational as it sounded, Ethan seized on the idea. Maybe she’d walked in, curled up on their bed. Maybe this was a mess the morning would wipe clean. He clung to that picture all the way home.
Their street looked painfully unchanged, sunlight dappling the driveway. He fumbled the key twice before the lock turned. “Lina?” His voice echoed into the stillness. The living room sat exactly as they’d left it—her mug on the coffee table, a folded blanket on the couch. The lack of footsteps and laughter made his heart drop.
The police moved through methodically, checking each room, scanning surfaces for notes or signs of hurried packing. Ethan hovered uselessly, glancing toward the hallway, half expecting her silhouette to appear at the bedroom door. “Nothing here,” one officer murmured to another. The words were calm and chillingly final.
When they left, the house felt even emptier, the tick of the clock mocking him. Ethan closed the door behind them and stood there, staring into the void. If she’s not here…where is she? An ache spread through his chest. He didn’t know whether to sit, scream, or start running.
Instead, his feet carried him to their bedroom. He opened her closet, the place she reflexively stored all her stuff—even the mundane. The familiar scent of lavender fabric softener and faint traces of her perfume drifted out. Dresses lined the rack, the colors and textures of years spent together. He reached out, letting the fabric brush against his fingers, as if touching her.
Like a dog on a scent, he kept looking for something, anything that would explain things. On the floor, half hidden, sat her old shoebox of mementos—movie stubs, ticket passes, and scrapbooks of photographs. It had been years since he’d seen it. But pushed behind a tangle of boots, something caught his eye: folded slips of paper and printed receipts.
He sat on the carpet, pulling them into the light. They were mostly parking tickets and restaurant bills, dated from the last month, some from just a week ago. He didn’t recognise these places. They were from lunchtime hours, and bore evening timestamps—all from when he’d been at work. His pulse quickened. Why did she keep them? Why hide them here?
The questions bore deeper with each receipt. A restaurant. A mid-city car park. Each detail pulled a thread loose. These were proof of repeated meetings with someone—quiet enough to go unnoticed—until now. His throat tightened. He could see her there, leaning in toward somebody, smiling. Someone who wasn’t him.
The thought slipped in before he could stop it—Is the baby even mine? It left a bitter taste in his mouth. He clenched the receipts in his fist, furious at himself. Lina had been laughing with him yesterday. She had given him their beautiful daughter. How could he doubt her now?
He shoved the papers back into the shoebox, breath coming in shudders. This seemed to have a beginning in events, way before the hospital, and everything that tore his life apart. Ethan sat in the quiet, fighting the urge to call the police back. He wasn’t sure where the truth lay anymore.
Ethan sat motionless for a few minutes after finding the receipts, the shoebox still at his feet. Then he grabbed his keys. If the police wanted to follow protocol, fine, but he wouldn’t just sit here. The parking tickets listed an address. He needed to know, and he would!
The car engine hummed in the late afternoon heat. As the streets blurred by, his mind slipped backward in time. Five years ago, it had been a different job, a smaller apartment, and fewer responsibilities. And then Lina. She’d appeared in the office like sunlight that warmed his heart.
He’d been buried in invoices in the Accounts Department, aware of the laughter drifting in from Advertising. Lina had been the quiet center of that energy. She was quick to smile, quicker to listen. Everyone loved her calm manner, her ability to connect without even trying.
They met properly over a printer jam. She’d laughed at his muttered curses, taken the machine apart in seconds, and handed him his documents like it was nothing. Her hands smelled faintly of lavender lotion. He remembered thinking—absurdly, irreversibly—That’s her. I’ll marry her.
Over coffee a week later, she told him she had no family. Her voice was steady, but the shadows behind her eyes didn’t match the small smile. An accident, she explained—cars, fire, final goodbyes swallowed by sirens. She’d taken care of herself ever since. And he had never alluded to the subject since. What mattered was her.
They built a quiet life together. There had never been any dramatic fights, or hidden resentments—at least not that he ever noticed. Lina was always steady, approachable, and warm—his home hearth. She remembered family birthdays, left notes in his lunch bag, and made Sunday mornings feel like they’d stolen a piece of heaven.
So how—and why—would she meet another man in secret? The thought burned. Was he blind? Had all those small kindnesses been a cover for something else? He gripped the steering wheel tighter as the area from the parking ticket loomed closer on his navigation display.
Tracking the restaurant from the bills was no difficult task. The restaurant was small, with copper lights and dark wooden tables visible through the windows. He parked across the street, the ticketed garage looming behind him, and stared for a long moment before stepping out. The receipt’s date and the time were etched into his mind.
Inside, a man in his fifties greeted him warmly. “First time here?” Ethan shook his head, pulling up Lina’s photo on his phone. “Have you seen her? She’s my wife. You might have seen her around.” Relief flickered when the man’s face lit with recognition.
“Oh yes,” the manager said, smiling. “Lovely lady. Always polite, always had time for a chat. She usually came alone, late afternoons. Would sit by the window with tea and a pastry.” Ethan’s chest eased slightly. Alone meant no stranger, no romantic betrayal.
“She’d stop by after leaving the old age home across the street,” the man added casually. Ethan’s thoughts faltered. “Old age home?” He turned to glance out the window, following the man’s pointing finger to a squat brick building with barred gates and a weathered sign.
It didn’t make sense. Lina had told him—or so he’d understood—that she had no family. She’d sworn everything was gone, wiped away in that crash. “Do you know who she visited?” Ethan asked, trying to keep his voice even, though his throat felt tight.
The manager leaned closer, lowering his voice almost conspiratorially. “I am not really sure. She never mentioned the person, and I didn’t want to pry. But, you could tell she cared about them a lot.” Ethan felt the words like blunt force against the side of his skull.
Ethan’s pulse quickened. “She looked upset, you mean?” The manager nodded slowly, thinking. “Yes, perhaps. She never said why. I didn’t want to pry—she struck me as private. But it was clear they mattered to her. She’d always visit them before coming here.” The uncertainty in his voice gnawed at Ethan.
As far as Ethan knew, Lina had no family—none alive, at least. So who was this person? Why the secrecy? What kind of hold did they have over her? His mind began weaving dangerous possibilities: debt, blackmail, threats,… It could be something that could have driven her away…or taken her.
He tried to think rationally, but darker possibilities kept flooding in. If this person wasn’t family, why did she visit them so faithfully? And why couldn’t she trust Ethan with the truth? The betrayal stung—but beneath it all, another feeling surged, sharper and colder. He was afraid.
Fear surged for Lina and for their baby. If she’d hidden this from him, what else was buried in her past? And if this mysterious connection had anything to do with today’s disappearance, then they both could be in danger—maybe even right now. He felt the answers slipping further away.
Ethan stood outside the restaurant, staring across the street at the squat brick building. One decision remained—to turn back and tell the police, or walk into whatever truth lay ahead. His hands tightened in his jacket pockets. He wasn’t going home without answers. Not this time.
His phone buzzed. The caller ID instantly picked it up as the police. They had probably noticed his absence or found something new. He let it ring for a second, collecting his thoughts, and then picked up. He asked, infusing his voice with all the authority he could muster, “Well?”
The officer answered, “Nothing yet, just called to tell you, we’ll keep you posted, and not to do anything hasty.” A bit late for that, Ethan thought as he cut the call. He spent a little more time making up his mind, but he knew what he had to do.
Tucking the phone away, he stepped off the curb. Each stride across the street felt heavier, as if the air itself resisted him. The metal gates to the old age home were open, and a receptionist was visible behind a broad front desk. There would be no turning back.
Inside, the air carried a faint smell of antiseptic and faded flowers. The receptionist looked up with polite confusion as he approached. Ethan pulled his phone from his pocket and brought up Lina’s photo. “Please…this is my wife. She’s missing—and she has our newborn, just hours old.”
His voice cracked, pleading past pride. “I think she’s been visiting someone here. Could you tell me who? I know you have confidentiality rules, but I’m begging you—as a husband, as a father—please.” Every muscle in his body tensed while he waited for her reply.
The woman’s brow furrowed. “I’m not supposed to—” She hesitated, glancing toward the hallway. “There’s been a lot of emotion today. Mr. Carrington…she was visiting him.” Ethan blinked. Carrington? That name meant nothing. Before marriage, Lina’s surname had been Dawson. The mismatch jarred, scattering his thoughts in a million new directions.
“She said he was her father,” the receptionist added gently. The words didn’t fit into Ethan’s mind. He shook his head. “That’s impossible.” Dawson, not Carrington. No family alive—she’d told him that herself. The receptionist studied his stunned face, then sighed softly. “Maybe you’d better come with me.”
Ethan followed her down a quiet corridor lined with closed doors. The air grew heavier, the silence interrupted only by the soft rattle of a distant cart. His pulse thrummed in his ears. She stopped at a door near the end. “She’s inside,” the woman murmured.
Ethan stepped in and froze. Lina sat in a chair, their tiny daughter bundled in her arms. Tears streamed unchecked down her face. On the bed beside her lay an elderly man, eyes closed, skin pale. A stillness in the room signaled the finality of death.
For a moment, relief flooded him—she was safe, so was their girl. He crossed to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She sobbed harder, her grip on the infant tightening. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “He just…he’s no more.” Her voice broke on the last word.
Ethan eased the baby into his arms, holding her close while Lina covered her face with trembling hands. He looked at the man on the bed—Carrington—and tried to reconcile him with the woman he loved. Questions spun in jagged circles inside his head.
When Lina’s breathing finally steadied, she lifted her gaze to meet his. “I should have told you,” she began. “But I didn’t know how.” The words carried years of weight, years she had kept locked away. Ethan stayed silent, giving her the space to unravel the knot.
“My mom died when I was a baby,” Lina said. “Dad raised me until…until he was arrested. I was eight.” Her face tightened. “I would rather not name the crime. I ended up in foster care. When I turned eighteen, I changed my name. I didn’t want his shadow continuously dogging me.”
Her eyes dropped to the floor. “I was ashamed of him. And he…he kept writing me letters from prison, but I never answered. Two months ago, he called. He’d served his time. He found me. I met him…well, because…I was curious, I suppose. He was blood after all.”
Her voice wavered. “He told me he had cancer. Not much time left. I couldn’t just walk away—and not do anything. I brought him here. I didn’t tell you because…” She faltered. “Because I thought it might change how you saw me. And we were so happy about our pregnancy. I didn’t want to ruin it.”
Ethan swallowed hard. “Lina…you thought I wouldn’t understand?” She met his gaze helplessly. “I’d lived with the shame for so long, I forgot how to share it. And now—” Her shoulders trembled. “He died today, but he saw his granddaughter. That mattered to him.”
She wiped at her face, finally looking lighter through her grief. “He wanted to meet her so badly. They called me this morning to tell me he had taken a turn for the worse, and I just did not have the heart to deny him. Every minute counted. I didn’t even realize I had left my phone behind until a few minutes before you walked in.”
Ethan reached for her hand, threading his fingers through hers. He said, “I’d have helped you know. If I knew what you were carrying. I was so worried when you disappeared, Lina. I’ve spent the day racking my brain thinking, what I had done, for you to run out on me like that!”
She smiled at him sadly, “I’m sorry.” “No more secrets, please. That’s all I ask,” he said quietly. She nodded. An exhausted, brittle smile barely touching her lips hovered around her mouth. His thumb brushed over her knuckles, the baby stirring in his arm.
They sat like that for a long moment—father, mother, and child—beside the man who had shaped and haunted her life in equal measure. Ethan still had a hundred questions, but one answer was clear enough: She hadn’t run from him, and she wasn’t going to. For now, that was the only thing that mattered.
As they stepped out of the old age home, the weight of grief still pressing on their shoulders, Ethan tightened his hand around Lina’s. The city moved indifferently around them, but he knew their promise mattered most—no more lies, no more shadows. Only truth, love, and beginning again together.