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wheeled the cart out the door and started down the hallway. She turned the corner and slipped into a
vacant room and shut the door and locked it.
There was a baby lying on the bed in the room. The nurse hurriedly but gently undressed the baby that
was labeled with the blue card and laid him on the bed beside the other infant. Then she undressed the
other infant, switched the clothing and placed the new child in the box with the blue card. She then
redressed the other infant and left him sleeping peacefully on the bed, with a pillow on each side of
him.
Opening the door quietly she checked the hallway for people and seeing no one, she wheeled the cart
out of the room and down the hallway to the room with Harris on the door tag. She knocked softly and
waited for an answer. There was no answer. She opened the door and wheeled the cart into the room
and positioned it close beside the bed of the woman sleeping there. She leaned over the box and
whispered to the sleeping baby "I love you." She kissed him gently on his soft baby cheek, ran her
hand over his soft baby hair, and took a deep breath of his scent for the last time. She pulled the little
blue card off the plastic box and looked carefully at the name on it and chuckled with tears in her eyes
and a breaking heart. "How ironic. My son. Alexander. Protector of man."
She replaced the card, turned and left the room quietly making her way back to the room where the
infant lay on the bed. She picked up the baby, and whispered to him "We’re gonna have an adventure
little Harris." She made her way to down to the general patient’s floor and into another vacant room,
where she took off her nurse’s uniform, the bra and fake breast inserts. She switched it for a pair of
well worn jeans, with a black belt, a white tee shirt with a red and black checked flannel shirt over it.
The nursing shoes and stockings were exchanged for socks and hiking boots.
He let his long brunette hair down and braided it quickly and efficiently, not thinking about the last
time it had been braided. He didn’t begin to weep until he was in the hospital parking lot and sliding
into an old white panel van. He strapped the baby he had exchanged into an infant carrier in the back
seat.
Tears were streaming down his face. He was talking to the son he had left in a hospital room, with a
woman he didn’t know, the entire time. "I’m sorry I had to leave you there with a stranger. But it’s
safer for you. I don’t want you to be hurt. I want you to live. I want you to be warm and safe and
loved. Maybe I can come back for you, when it’s all over. I’ll always love you, my son. And if I am
never able to return, I want you to grow up healthy and strong. Grow up to be as good and strong as
your father."
****************
Jessica Harris woke from an unsettling dream when the infant in her room began to fret, but the
fragments she tried to grasp fled as soon as she caught sight of the baby . She was a little puzzled to
find the baby in her room, but decided that the busy staff must have brought him in while she was
asleep to save time and effort later in their busy day.
Jessica was sore and stiff from the birth. Alexander was her first child. While she contemplated the
wonder of that, she sorrowfully concluded he would most likely be her only child. Tony Harris had
been highly displeased when his current female interest had informed him she was with child. He
hadn’t planned on having any "brats", as he called them.
He was even more displeased when Jessica had insisted they marry so the child would have a father.
He had stormed out only to return the next day to rush her to the courthouse and stand in front of a
Justice of the Peace to take their vows. He wouldn’t hear of a church wedding, cursing and ranting at
her that he wasn’t made of money.
He had been angry when she had woken him from sleep night before last, as she went into labor. He’d
brought her to the hospital and left her to the care of the staff, saying he had to get some sleep before
going to work the next morning. She hadn’t seen him since then.
Jessica sighed tiredly and ran her hand through her stringy hair. She needed a bath. Then she smiled
gently and pulled her sore body out of the dubious comfort of the bed.
She bent over her son and touched his soft cheek. He turned his head toward her hand his little mouth