Safe and Sound (Book 4 of "The Story of Us" series) [Completed]

Chapter 3 - The Beginning

[Nick]

I laid in bed last night, thinking about what I was told on the phone. Ella didn't die. It felt like a weight had been lifted off of me because whether or not it was the truth, I still felt like that whole incident was my fault. I always felt like Ella's death was my fault. I always felt like the stress Harley was under was my fault.

But Ella didn't die. We had missed out on eight years of our daughter's life. We had no idea where she was or how she was. She was somewhere out there, God knows where, and had no idea how much she was wanted. She probably didn't even know whoever bought her wasn't her real parents. She didn't know how much it killed Harley thinking she was dead.

And I kept my promise to Harley. We left Noah and Sadie with Jon and Nadine and caught the first flight to Atlanta. It was the only way we could find out, or hope to find out what happened to Ella.

"I hate this hospital," Harley whispered as I looked over at her as we sat in a waiting room, waiting for the hospital's administrator to come out. "I always hated it."

"Hope to God we don't run into you know who," I said as Harley looked at me, reaching over to hold my hand. She entwined her fingers with mine and I smiled at her. "No matter what we find out, we'll make it through this, right?"

"Right," Harley smiled as we looked up to see a man in a suit and white coat walked out.

"Mr. and Mrs. Carter?" he asked as we stood up, nodding our hands. "Glad you could come so quickly," he said, shaking both of our hands. "I'm Robert Halliwell, the administrator here. If you could follow me back to my office," he said as we started following him back through the double doors. "As you probably can tell, things have been chaotic since Dr. McClain was arrested."

"Considering how long he's been doing this, I can imagine," I said as we followed him into his office where he shut the door behind us. "So we were told last night that our daughter didn't die at birth like we were told."

"Harley Harper, right?" Mr. Halliwell asked as I looked at Harley who nodded. "As far as we can tell, by what Dr. McClain told the investigators, your daughter didn't die at birth."

"How many babies did he sell?" Harley asked as Mr. Halliwell took his glasses off. "I mean, are we allowed to ask that?"

"Over the years, as far as we can tell right now, around 50," Mr. Halliwell said as I looked away. "So a few a year. What's interesting is it looks as if your daughter was the only one in 2006."

"So you think, what, that he got more money for the baby because Harley was famous or something?" I asked as Mr. Halliwell shrugged. I knew he didn't have all the answers, but I couldn't help but ask. "How can we find out where she is?"

"Well, in your daughter's case, unlike a lot of the other cases, she couldn't have just left the hospital," Mr. Halliwell said as I reached over, holding Harley's hand. "According to the charts, you had a ruptured placenta and had to have an emergency cesarean surgery," he said as I looked at Harley who nodded.

"He said that she wasn't breathing and that she went too long without oxygen," Harley said as Mr. Halliwell looked back at something on his desk.

"On that day, there were 34 babies born here," Mr. Halliwell said, looking back up at us. "Of those 34, there were 15 Caucasian babies. Of those 15, seven were girls," he said as I looked at him.

"What's that mean?" I asked.

"It means that your daughter would have had to been in the hospital here, for a week at the most, maybe more," Mr. Halliwell said as I took a deep breath. "Out of those seven girls, three were delivered early, which your daughter was."

"About a month early," Harley said as Mr. Halliwell nodded.

"We could narrow those three down," he said as I stood up from the chair and walked around it. I was getting nervous. "We have the blood types of the three girls, if you two could give me yours..."

"I'm O positive," Harley said. "We're both O positive. We have two other children, they're O positive, too."

"And you are the father?" Mr. Halliwell asked as I nodded. We watched him as he looked down at papers on his desk. My heart was literally beating out of my chest. "One of the girls has an O positive blood type and one has an O negative, which is possible with two parents who are both O positive."

"Does that mean, that, one of them is Ella?" I asked, almost stuttering over my words.

"Possibly," Mr. Halliwell said as I looked at Harley to see tears falling from her eyes. "The next step is finding out more about these two girls and us contacting the two families."

"So we just sit by and wait?" Harley asked as Mr. Halliwell stood up. "I can't just sit back and wait."

"We'll have you both go to the lab and get tested so that we can run your blood work with the girls," he said as I sighed, looking away. Harley was getting upset and I was getting pissed off. "As much as I know you want to go and see these two families, you can't."

"One of them could be our daughter," I spoke up. "So why the hell not? We should sue the hell out of this hospital for not knowing what a asshole you had on staff."

"Nick, don't," Harley whispered as she stood up from her chair. "We'll go get our blood work done, but I'm not going to sit by for weeks while you do this. Contact the families today and we'll be back tomorrow."

Before I could even say anything, Harley grabbed my hand and lead me out of the office. I could see her tears falling from her eyes and I stopped her, turning her around to face me, but she wouldn't look up.

"Hey, we're gonna find her, okay?" I whispered as she wrapped her arms around me, hugging me tightly. I wrapped my arms around her, holding her close and kissing the top of her head.

This was effecting her more than she was letting on and frankly I was getting worried.