Chapter 5 The Missing Mother

I woke to the sound of beeping monitors and the distinct antiseptic smell of a hospital room. My throat felt raw from the intubation tube, and a dull ache pulsed across my abdomen where the surgical incision had been made. But these sensations were secondary to the overwhelming panic that gripped me.

"My babies," I croaked, trying to push myself up. "Where are my babies?"

A nurse appeared at my side, gently pressing me back against the pillows. "Easy, Dr. Montgomery. You need to rest."

"The twins," I insisted, my voice stronger now. "I need to see them."

"They're in the NICU," she explained, adjusting my IV. "Born healthy but a little underweight, which is normal for twins at 36 weeks."

Relief flooded through me, quickly followed by a new concern. "The cord blood collection—did it—"

"Successful," came a male voice from the doorway. Daniel stood there, looking more disheveled than I'd ever seen him. His normally immaculate suit was wrinkled, his hair mussed as if he'd been running his hands through it repeatedly. "Both umbilical cords yielded excellent samples."

"And Sophie?" I asked, noticing he wasn't carrying the tablet he usually used to monitor her vitals remotely.

A hint of something like hope softened his features. "Responding well to the preliminary treatment. Her white cell count is already improving."

I closed my eyes briefly, allowing myself a moment of pure gratitude. It had worked. The impossible gamble we'd taken might actually save Sophie's life.

"I want to see my children," I said, opening my eyes again. "All three of them."

Daniel hesitated, and I immediately tensed.

"What aren't you telling me?"

"You lost a lot of blood during the procedure," he said carefully. "More than anticipated. The doctors want you to rest for at least 24 hours before—"

"How much blood?" I interrupted, my medical training immediately kicking in.

Another pause. "Nearly two liters."

I sucked in a breath. That explained the lightheadedness, the extreme fatigue. "That's hemorrhaging. What happened?"

"The collection procedure was... more invasive than standard protocol," Daniel admitted. "Dr. Rodriguez made the call when the initial collection yielded less than optimal cell counts."

Anger burned through my exhaustion. "So they went ahead with the experimental procedure anyway."

"It was necessary," Daniel insisted. "And you're stable now."

"No thanks to you," I spat. "Where was Ethan during all this?"

Daniel's expression hardened. "Dr. Cole was removed from the operating room when he objected to the modified procedure."

"You had my colleague physically removed?" I was incredulous.

"He was interfering with a life-saving medical intervention."

"For Sophie," I clarified bitterly. "Not for me."

"For all of you," Daniel countered. "The twins are healthy. Sophie is responding to treatment. And you're recovering."

I turned my face away from him, too exhausted and angry to continue the argument. "I want to see my children. Now."

After some reluctant consultation with the medical staff, arrangements were made. I was wheeled to the NICU first, where two tiny bundles lay in adjacent incubators. My son and daughter—so small, yet perfectly formed, with wisps of dark hair like mine.

"Can I hold them?" I asked the NICU nurse.

"One at a time," she said kindly, lifting my daughter first and placing her gently in my arms.

The weight of her—barely five pounds—felt simultaneously fragile and monumental. I traced a finger along her perfect cheek, marveling at the tiny fingernails, the bow of her lips that mirrored my own.

"Hello, little one," I whispered. "I'm your mom."

Daniel stood silently at the foot of my wheelchair, watching the interaction with an unreadable expression. When I reluctantly handed my daughter back to the nurse in exchange for my son, I caught a glimpse of something like longing in his eyes.

"They need names," I said, cradling my son against my chest.

"I thought we agreed to wait," Daniel replied cautiously.

"They're not just cord blood donors anymore," I said firmly. "They're people. Our children. They deserve identities."

After a moment, Daniel nodded. "What did you have in mind?"

"Lily," I said, looking toward my daughter's incubator. "And Matthew."

"Lily and Matthew," Daniel repeated softly. "Kingsley."

"Montgomery-Kingsley," I corrected, though even as I said it, a plan was forming in my mind—one that didn't include sharing their father's name at all.

Next, we visited Sophie's room in the pediatric oncology ward. Despite having just undergone the initial stem cell infusion, she was awake and coloring when we arrived, her pale face lighting up at the sight of me.

"Bella!" she called, setting aside her crayons. "Did the babies come?"

"They did," I smiled, fighting back tears at how much more alert she already seemed. "A boy and a girl."

"Can I see them?" she asked eagerly.

"Soon," Daniel promised, moving to her bedside and smoothing her thin hair. "When they're a little stronger, and when you've had more of your special medicine."

Sophie nodded seriously. "Victoria said the babies gave me their special blood to make me better."

I shot Daniel a sharp look, which he avoided. Victoria had clearly been continuing her inappropriate conversations with Sophie.

"Something like that," I said carefully. "And you're already looking so much better."

For the next three days, I divided my time between recovering in my hospital room, visiting the twins in the NICU, and checking on Sophie's progress. The initial results were promising—her body was accepting the cord blood stem cells, and her blood counts were steadily improving.

Daniel was a constant presence, moving between Sophie's room and the NICU, coordinating with specialists, and occasionally stopping by my room with updates. He seemed genuinely invested in all three children, which made what I was planning all the more difficult.

On the fourth day, Ethan finally managed to visit me privately. He closed the door behind him and spoke in a low voice.

"I've been trying to get to you since the surgery," he explained. "They've had security keeping me out."

"Daniel," I sighed. "He told me you were removed from the OR."

Ethan's expression darkened. "I was physically dragged out by Kingsley security when I tried to stop them from proceeding with that experimental harvesting technique. Bella, what they did was dangerous and unauthorized."

"I know," I said quietly. "I lost two liters of blood."

"More than that," Ethan corrected grimly. "Nearly three by my estimate, before I was removed. They were deliberately underreporting your blood loss in the charts."

A chill ran through me. "Why would they do that?"

"To hide how close you came to dying," Ethan said bluntly. "Bella, I heard Rodriguez talking to Daniel before the surgery. He said, and I quote, 'Maximum extraction is the priority, regardless of maternal complications.'"

I closed my eyes, Daniel's words from our last confrontation echoing in my mind: "This was always about saving Sophie. Everything else is secondary."

"There's something else," Ethan continued reluctantly. "I overheard Victoria Lancaster and Daniel arguing yesterday in the hallway outside the NICU. She was insisting that once Sophie's treatment is complete, they should proceed with something called 'Phase Two.'"

"Phase Two?" I repeated, dread pooling in my stomach.

"I couldn't hear all the details, but it involved additional stem cell harvesting from the twins over time." He hesitated. "Bella, it sounded like they're planning to use your children as ongoing donors for Sophie, possibly for years."

The room seemed to tilt around me. Not just the cord blood, then. Daniel and Victoria had planned a long-term extraction program, using my babies as living stem cell factories for their sister.

"I need to get out of here," I whispered, more to myself than to Ethan.

"What do you mean?"

I gripped his hand. "Ethan, I need your help. Can I trust you?"

He squeezed back without hesitation. "Always."

That night, after Daniel had left for his usual late meeting with Sophie's specialists, I put my plan into action. With Ethan's help, I was discharged against medical advice, the paperwork processed through a sympathetic nurse who had witnessed Victoria's condescending treatment of hospital staff.

The twins were more challenging. Technically, they were still under observation in the NICU, though they were thriving and nearly ready for discharge. Using my medical credentials and Ethan's authority as a senior attending, we arranged for their "transfer" to another unit for specialized testing.

Instead, they were bundled into the back of Ethan's car, secure in the infant carriers I had secretly purchased online and had delivered to his apartment weeks earlier.

"Are you sure about this?" Ethan asked as he helped me into the passenger seat, my surgical incision still tender and painful. "Kingsley will use every resource at his disposal to find you."

"I'm counting on it," I replied grimly. "That's why we need to disappear completely."

My emergency go-bag had been packed for weeks—cash, a prepaid phone, identity documents I'd managed to secure through one of my former patients who worked in government administration. Enough to disappear, at least temporarily.

"What about Sophie?" Ethan asked gently as we pulled away from the hospital.

Tears filled my eyes. "I can't help her if Daniel turns my other children into perpetual medical resources. I need to protect them first, then find another way to help Sophie."

The pain of leaving Sophie behind was almost unbearable. In the months of my pregnancy, I had grown to love her fiercely—this child who was, in some biological sense, my daughter too. But I couldn't save her by sacrificing Lily and Matthew.

We drove through the night, switching vehicles at a prearranged location where another doctor sympathetic to my situation was waiting with her car. By dawn, we were three hundred miles away, checking into a motel under false names.

"I can stay with you for a few days," Ethan offered, helping me settle the sleeping twins in the makeshift cribs we'd created from dresser drawers. "Help you get established somewhere."

I shook my head. "You've risked enough. Go back before they realize you're involved. Tell them I drugged you or something."

He smiled sadly. "No one would believe that."

"Then tell them the truth—that you were helping a patient escape medical exploitation." I touched his cheek gently. "Thank you, Ethan. I'll never forget this."

After he left, I sat on the edge of the motel bed, watching my children sleep, overcome by the enormity of what I had done—and what lay ahead.

* * *

Three years passed like a dream—or perhaps a nightmare from which I couldn't wake. We moved constantly, never staying in one place longer than a few months. I worked under the table at free clinics and community health centers, places desperate enough for medical expertise that they didn't ask too many questions about my lack of current credentials.

The twins grew from fragile newborns into sturdy, curious toddlers. Lily with her serious brown eyes and Matthew with his mischievous smile became the center of my universe. I told them stories about their brave big sister, though never mentioning her name or their father's.

I monitored the medical journals obsessively, searching for news of Sophie's condition. Six months after our escape, a paper was published in the New England Journal of Medicine about a groundbreaking cord blood treatment that had achieved complete remission in a five-year-old leukemia patient at New York Presbyterian. The authors were listed as Rodriguez, V. Lancaster, and D. Kingsley.

So Sophie had survived, at least initially. The knowledge brought both relief and renewed grief.

I knew Daniel was still searching for us. Twice we had to flee in the middle of the night when I spotted men in suits asking questions in our neighborhood. Once, I found a tracking device in Matthew's favorite stuffed bear—a gift from a "kind stranger" at the park.

We settled eventually in a small town in New Mexico, where I found work as a cleaning woman at a rural health clinic. The position was far below my qualifications, but it came with a small apartment behind the clinic and, most importantly, access to medical supplies and equipment for the twins.

I had begun testing them regularly, terrified that they might have inherited genetic vulnerabilities to the same condition that afflicted Sophie. So far, they remained healthy, but the fear never left me.

It was there, in that dusty clinic storeroom, that I was restocking supplies when I heard a news report from the small radio on the receptionist's desk.

"...Kingsley Pharmaceutical heir Daniel Kingsley has announced a nationwide search for bone marrow donors for his daughter, Sophie Kingsley, whose leukemia has returned after three years in remission. Kingsley has offered a reward of $5 million for information leading to a successful donor match..."

The box of gauze pads I was holding clattered to the floor. Sophie's cancer had returned. After everything—the cord blood, the experimental treatments—she was sick again.

That night, I sat at our tiny kitchen table, the twins asleep in the room we all shared, and stared at the national bone marrow registry website on my ancient laptop. I had registered us all under our false names when we first arrived in New Mexico, a precaution in case one of us ever needed emergency treatment.

With trembling fingers, I entered Sophie's likely HLA markers—a calculation based on what I knew of her genetic makeup and mine.

The search results appeared instantly: "1 potential match found within 100 miles."

Me. Of course it was me. I had been her original bone marrow donor in college, the reason Victoria had stolen my genetic material in the first place. My bone marrow had saved Daniel once; now it might save his daughter.

But registering under my real name would lead Daniel straight to us.

For three days, I agonized over the decision. On the fourth day, I updated my registry profile with my real name, but kept our current location information obscured through a medical privacy filter that would require direct contact through the registry system.

It took less than 24 hours for the registry to contact me.

"Dr. Montgomery? This is the National Marrow Donor Program. We have an urgent match request for a patient named Sophie Kingsley."

My heart raced as I confirmed my willingness to donate. The coordinator explained that due to the patient's critical condition, they would arrange for collection at my nearest medical center, with all expenses covered by the recipient's family.

I agreed to the donation date, knowing it was only a matter of time now before Daniel found us. I considered running again, taking the twins somewhere even more remote. But I couldn't let Sophie die when I had the power to save her.

One week later, I was preparing dinner when Matthew ran to the window, pointing excitedly.

"Car, Mama! Big car!"

I peered out to see a black SUV pulling up outside our modest apartment. My breath caught in my throat as a familiar figure emerged—tall, impeccably dressed despite the desert heat, his face leaner and harder than I remembered.

Daniel had found us.

The twins huddled behind me as I opened the door before he could knock.

For a long moment, we simply stared at each other. Three years had changed us both. New lines bracketed his mouth, and silver threaded his temples. I wondered what he saw in me—a formerly elegant doctor now dressed in faded jeans and a worn T-shirt, my once-styled hair cut practically short.

"Bella," he said finally, his voice hoarse.

"How did you find us?" I asked, though I already knew.

"Baby formula purchase patterns," he replied. "Specialized hypoallergenic formula ordered to remote locations. I've had an algorithm running for years."

Of course. Matthew's milk protein allergy had required special formula, which I'd been ordering from an online pharmacy.

Daniel's gaze moved past me to where the twins peered around my legs. His expression changed, softening in a way I'd only ever seen with Sophie.

"Are these—" he started, then stopped, emotion making his voice unsteady.

Matthew stepped forward boldly. "Who are you?"

Daniel crouched down to the boy's level, keeping a respectful distance. "My name is Daniel."

"Bad uncle," Lily declared suddenly from behind me, pointing an accusatory finger.

Daniel looked stricken. "What?"

I placed a protective hand on Lily's head. "That's what they call the men in suits who've been following us. The bad uncles who want to take them away."

Understanding and then pain crossed Daniel's face. "I'm not here to take anyone away, Lily," he said gently. "I'm here because your sister Sophie is very sick, and your mom might be able to help her."

"Sophie?" Matthew's eyes widened. "From Mama's stories?"

Daniel glanced up at me, surprise evident in his expression. "You told them about Sophie?"

"Of course I did," I said quietly. "She's their sister."

Something shifted in Daniel's eyes—gratitude, perhaps, or respect. He stood slowly.

"We need to talk," he said. "About Sophie. About everything."

I nodded, stepping back to allow him inside. "The twins need their bath first. Then we'll talk."

As I ushered the children toward the bathroom, I felt Daniel's gaze on my back—the weight of three years of separation, of secrets and lies and desperate measures taken in the name of love.

Whatever came next would change all our lives forever. Again.