I hadn't even seen my blind date's face. I'd just sat down at the café when the hospital called—urgent, come back now.

A newborn with albinism had been stolen from the maternity ward. Every available staff member was searching. Nothing.

No leads on that end, and on the other, the mother was losing it.

She insisted her son was perfectly healthy and accused the hospital of secretly swapping her baby—taking her big, healthy boy and palming her off with a child with albinism.

The screaming and thrashing during her postpartum observation triggered a massive hemorrhage. Her condition turned critical.

And right now, half the department's doctors were tied up and the rest were away on training rotations. I was the only one available to handle this kind of emergency.

I scrubbed in, pushed through the doors, and stopped short. The patient everyone had been talking about was Rowena Rodriguez.

She must have lost a lot of blood already. Her eyes were glazed, her voice a drifting mutter: "Senior Paddy really screwed me this time. I told him to use protection but he whined that it didn't feel good. Hiding that the baby's his is one thing, but you can't hide albinism. If only Clint hadn't done that genetic screening..."

...

"At least Senior Paddy took the baby away."

The assisting physician and the anesthesiologist in the operating suite both turned to stare at me.

But right now none of that mattered. We had to save her.

I'd just signaled the anesthesiologist to bring the surgical consent form when Rowena's expression snapped into focus. She grabbed my wrist and screamed, "I refuse surgery!"

Saving her was the priority, but we couldn't override a patient's wishes.

I pulled my hand free as naturally as I could, took the consent form, and said evenly, "You've lost over a thousand milliliters of blood. Without surgery, you could die."

She surged forward and slapped the consent form out of my hands.

The metal clip on the clipboard scraped across my ankle. She glanced down at it sideways, cold and utterly indifferent.

Then she put on the look of someone who'd seen right through us, her voice cutting: "You're just worried I'll die here and you'll have to answer for it."

She hadn't recognized me behind the surgical cap and mask.

The assisting physician shot back, "That's your own dirty mind talking. Don't lump us in with you."

That set her off. She sat bolt upright and jabbed a finger at me, snarling, "Look at her! What kind of attitude is that? Try me. I'll buy this whole hospital and fire every last one of you.

"They all take orders from you, don't they? Tell them to give me back my healthy son. Otherwise I'll die right here on this table, and you can explain that to the hospital. You can explain it to my fiancé."

The sheet beneath her was soaking red again. I glanced at it. "Your son has albinism. The hospital is taking it very seriously, and staff are searching as we speak. Right now, your condition is critical."

I was running out of patience, but I kept trying to reason with her.

Saving lives is my bottom line as a doctor. It always has been.

"No. I gave birth to a healthy son. I want you to give me back a healthy son.

"Without him, Clint will find out I cheated. He won't marry me.

"I'm going to be a rich man's wife. I'm going to live in luxury."

She bared her teeth, her eyes bloodshot, fingers twisting the sterile green drape beneath her.

In her eyes I was the one robbing her of a lifetime of wealth.

She lurched to her feet on the surgical table, hunched over me, and locked both hands around my throat. "Find a healthy baby and bring it here. Or I'm dragging you down with me."

The child was nothing to her but a bargaining chip to claw her way up. As long as she could use it, as long as the lie held, nothing else mattered—not a trace of a mother's love for her own son.

A chill ran through me.

Whatever patience I'd been holding onto burned away in an instant.

But before I could pry her hands off, her strength gave out and she collapsed back onto the table with a dull thud.

I stared her down, every syllable dropping like ice. "If you're still refusing surgery, fine. We bring your family into this. Are they here yet?"

"You haven't given me back a healthy son. You have no right to tell my family anything. Don't you dare contact him."

She probably didn't realize that in a situation like this, the hospital would have notified her family immediately.

Just then, Head Nurse Carter opened the door and came in, finding an excuse to pull me aside near the entrance.

A quick glance toward Rowena—satisfied she wasn't listening—and Helen pressed her mouth close to my ear. "The baby was found in a trash can in the men's restroom. They're trying to resuscitate him, but..."

Her gaze fell. A tear hung at the corner of her eye, and her voice came out scraped hollow. "He's not going to make it."

The door slammed open.

Clint barged in.

Our eyes met, and he recognized me instantly.

"Muriel, who's not going to make it?"

Whoever had hurt the baby might still be somewhere in the hospital.

I suggested checking the security footage, and Helen Carter took the chance to hurry off to the security office.

Rowena flung herself out of bed—hemorrhaging, barely upright—and crumpled to the floor after two steps. Her eyes flooded red, tears pooling. "Clint, I begged them for so long. They knew I was hemorrhaging, knew my life was on the line, and they still refused to save me.

"So that's Muriel—she hates me for taking you, she's jealous I can have your baby, and she wants me dead. She got her colleagues in on it, all of them, to just stand there and let me bleed out.

"Thank God you came. Otherwise she would have killed me."

Clint dropped to one knee and gathered Rowena into his arms.

His chest heaved, a vein pulsing hard at his temple. "Muriel, you vicious woman. You don't deserve to call yourself a doctor."

I bit down on the rage, picked the surgical consent form up off the floor, and held it in front of him. "She refused surgery. She was fully conscious, and she wouldn't sign. That's why we didn't operate. And everything she just told you is a lie."

The assisting physician cut in, voice tight with frustration. "She gave up the surgery herself. How is that on us?"

Rowena shot the young doctor a covert glare, then crawled over to me and grabbed my ankle, putting on a look of fragile desperation. "Dr. Maxwell, please, save me. My son can't lose his mother the day he's born.

"I know you've held a grudge ever since I took Clint from you. But you're a doctor—how can you just stand by and watch me die? How can you abuse your authority and bully her into covering for you, into backing up your lies?"

The assisting physician clenched her fists and stepped forward to argue, but I held her back.

I didn't want anyone else dragged into this.

Clint grabbed my arm and yanked me toward him so hard my shoulder socket screamed. His face was inches from mine, eyes flat and dangerous. "Muriel, don't think you can fool me. Ro spent months dreaming about this baby. She'd never refuse surgery. Not a chance."

The moment the words left his mouth, he flinched as if something had just struck him. He lunged to Rowena's side.

Guilt flooded his eyes, his voice scraping raw. "Ro, it's my fault. I got here too late. You've been suffering. Where's our son?"

At the mention of the baby, Rowena visibly flinched.

She avoided his eyes, buried her face against his chest, and choked out, "He... the hospital took him.

"The doctors lied to me. They said I gave birth to a baby with albinism. But I saw him with my own eyes. His hair was jet black. He was a perfectly healthy baby.

"You really are calculating, Muriel. Refusing to operate on me, covering up the truth for the hospital on one hand, and clearing the way to steal Clint back on the other. Two birds with one stone."

Clint's eyes blazed red—instant, total, like a furnace door ripped open.

He laid Rowena on the bed, walked straight to me, and backhanded me across the face without a word.

No time to dodge. My body went weightless and my forehead slammed into the emergency monitor.

It took a long moment before the blur receded and the room came back.

My cheek and forehead burned, swollen and throbbing.

I tore my surgical cap off, hurled it to the floor, and pointed straight at Rowena. "Her baby has albinism! That's what she gave birth to!"

Rowena's shoulders heaved violently. Tears fell one after another as she sobbed, "Your hospital is trying to pass off a sick baby as ours."

Clint's brows knotted into a hard line. One hand closed around my throat and my feet left the ground.

His voice was low, scraped raw, every word ground out from somewhere deep in his chest. "Muriel—you people switched out my son. Your hospital actually had the nerve." His grip tightened. "Where is he? Where's my son?"

I hammered at his hand, kicked at his legs. None of it loosened his grip. Breathing only got harder.

When the assisting physician moved to help me, Clint spoke through clenched teeth: "Bring me my son, or I'll kill her right here."

The assistant and the anesthesiologist scrambled out the door.

My hands dropped, too weak to fight.

He flung me aside and I hit the floor hard.

Something stabbed into my back on impact. My clothes went wet all at once, the pain so fierce I couldn't stand. I could only curl up on the floor and scream through my teeth: "Clint James, that baby isn't yours! Senior Paddy's the father—ask her!"

The liquid spread from behind me to where I could see it, and I realized it was blood.

Rowena's eyes went wide with shock. She forced herself off the bed and clung to Clint, her voice thin and shaking. "Clint, there's nothing between me and Senior Paddy. She's lying.

"I love you so much. Heaven and earth can testify. I would never do something like that.

"Believe me, please believe me…"

She sank to her knees, putting on the full performance—the wronged woman, the unbearable injustice—and would not stop pleading.

The door slammed open. Head Nurse Carter burst in.

She was gasping for breath. "The baby's alive.

"Take the child. Stop hurting Dr. Maxwell."

Clint lunged across the room, snatched the baby into his arms, and tore the swaddling open. Every muscle in his body locked. The expression on his face just—emptied.

Rowena was shaking, terrified of being exposed. She crawled on her knees all the way to his side, her voice trembling. "Clint, our son doesn't have albinism. The hospital is lying to us. You have to get our healthy son back."

The words landed. Clint recoiled and shoved the baby away from him in one panicked motion.

Rowena froze, staring blankly.

But that baby had done nothing wrong. I forced myself upright on my knees through the screaming pain in my back and caught the child.

Seeing me barely holding on, Helen crept in and took the child from my arms. As she circled behind me, she let out a sharp cry. "Dr. Maxwell—your wound, you're losing too much blood! We need to treat you right now!"

Clint spun around at that, shoved Helen out of the operating suite, then scooped Rowena up and carried her toward the door.

Metal clanged and then stopped. From the other side he called out his threat: "If I don't see my son, none of you are getting in to save Muriel. Let her bleed out in there."

Rowena's voice followed right after: "Clint, she won't actually die in there, will she? Maybe we should try a different way."

"Ro, you're too kind. If they don't want Muriel dead, they'll hand our son over. Relax. I'm right here—no one's going to touch you or our boy."

"Clint, with you here I feel safe. Our son matters more than she ever could. I'll do whatever you say."

I crawled to the door, pain tearing through me with every inch, and beat my fist against it. "Clint James, that baby with albinism is Rowena and Senior Paddy's child! She never had a healthy baby—there is no other son! She played you! Let me out!"