A woman is shocked to discover that her husband switched their baby with another while she was unconscious. The man eventually met his fate on his path to avoid it.
Jim Shaw was running late. It was 8 a.m, and he had to get to the subway. His meeting began at 7.45 a.m, and he was supposed to present.
He was half walking, half running as he entered the train, and he almost collided with a beautiful woman who, instead of grumpily shaking him off, smiled and asked him to take things easy.
She was also standing because the seats were all taken, and Jim immediately wished he had gotten one he could vacate for her. As the train took off, he felt very self-conscious because of her, and he tried his best to ignore her.
After some minutes passed, he started working up the courage to talk to her, but his mind kept cooking up failures, and his body reacted by blushing. She noticed it and teased him about it, and that’s how Jim met Rose Martin, the woman he would marry.
They courted for two years before they went on to tie the knot in a small ceremony they held on the beach because it turned out it was both their favorite place.
A year later, they bought their own house, and some months after, Rose fell unexpectedly ill. She threw up in the mornings and suddenly looked like she had put on weight.
“We should get you to a doctor,” Jim told her on the third morning after she finished retching.
“I think we should, it might be the flu,” she said, but the doctor had other ideas.
“You’re pregnant, Rose, congratulations!” The doctor, a woman named Rue Scott, beamed.
“OMG, it was a baby?” Rose asked while Jim let out a whoop beside her. He had been wanting kids for some time and worked hard towards it. His perfect family would soon be complete.
“This is great news!” he told the doctor.
“Check back in later for an ultrasound and don’t forget antenatal care,” the doctor told them as they left that day.
They returned two weeks later for the ultrasound, but the doctor discovered something ghastly that dampened their happiness — there were red flags that suggested the child would be born with a defect.
“You could always choose to terminate the pregnancy if you feel it is too much risk for the woman, of course, and sometimes it’s more profitable as you won’t have to go through the heartache of watching them fritter away while you live,” Dr. Scott told them gently.
Rose gasped at the statement, but she was too shocked to notice her husband give a nod before catching himself.
“I think we should find out more about the supposed defects before we make that decision,” Jim said, earning his wife’s immediate animosity.
“What? How can you say that like it’s even an option? We shouldn’t look at it as one because I won’t get rid of my baby!” she said, her voice growing louder.
“Alright honey, let’s just see how things go, okay?” he said, choosing to calm her rather than push the matter even though he didn’t agree with her.
“We will need you to stay back for some time so we can monitor your status to see if we find anything more,” the doctor told them, and they agreed.
A week later, Rose returned to their home, and they started preparing to welcome their child. However, as they prepared, Jim couldn’t help but wonder how the child would come out.
“Would he need crutches?” he wondered. “A tube to eat?”
The months breezed past, and soon Rose became very heavy — she would be due anytime.
One afternoon, she woke from a nap and wanted to take a shower. She shrugged her clothes, but as she reached for the knob, she heard and felt water splashing to the floor. “That’s odd,” she thought, then she looked down and realized she was the source.
In the next instant, she was screaming at the top of her lungs for Jim, who had been in their living room watching a soccer match.
He materialized before her in the next instant, and in a few chaotic minutes, they were in a car headed to the hospital. Once there, they realized things were dicey, so they opted for a C–section.
Rose was put under, and the baby was delivered. The doctor cleaned the child and brought it to Jim since he was the only parent conscious, but the man didn’t want to look at the child.
He called the doctor aside and revealed his intentions to her. “Listen,” he said. “I can’t be stuck with a defective child for the rest of my life — is there anything you can do for me?”
“Mr. Shaw, I’m not sure what you’re sugges —” the doctor started to say, but he cut in.
“I think you are sure, doctor, and I’m willing to pay you $10,000 for the small service of helping me swap this child with another newborn — preferably a healthy one that cries?”
Indeed the child was silent as a stone and pale as moonlight; Jim didn’t think she would survive the day. He looked away in distaste, then the woman gave her answer — she would do it.
The deal was done by the time Rose came to, and the newborns had been swapped. Jim introduced the mother to her child, and she gushed over him with pride, especially because he was healthy.
But then it suddenly occurred to her that the child was male while the ultrasound had announced female. “Isn’t that weird, doctor?” she asked at some point, but the woman assured her mistakes as that happened from time to time.
“It’s nothing to be worried about. The child is here and is healthy,” the doctor said, then hurriedly left.
They were discharged later that day, and they returned home to start their life as a family. It was great, and they were happy for two years, then the boy took ill.
“It’s a sickness that will require prolonged medical supervision and is costly to treat,” the doctors told them. Jim couldn’t believe it. All he’d done had been for nothing?
Rose had been expecting such an eventuality, so she was not shocked, and she was ready to care for the child. Jim was not.
He suddenly started keeping late nights at work, and even on weekends, there was somewhere urgent he had to go. Their relationship suffered greatly, and Rose was left to care for their son.
One night, Jim stayed away completely, which meant she couldn’t sleep because someone had to keep vigil by their son’s side. Rose worried all night, and she was spent by morning so that when Jim walked in, she confronted him in exasperation.
“Why are you doing this to me?” she asked. “He’s your son too!”
“I didn’t sign up to be a doctor, Rose. I married you to be your husband, not to spend all my time and resources on a child that probably won’t survive in the end.”
“How can you have so little faith? You claim he won’t survive but you won’t even try to help him to. I’ll say it again Jim, this is your son too and you need to be responsible for him!”
The argument got more heated until their voices and emotions ran high, prompting Jim to reveal what he’d been hiding. “FYI, that kid you love so much ain’t even yours!” he growled.
“What?” she asked. “What are you implying?”
“It ain’t mine either,” he said, watching her. “The baby we had was indeed a girl and I had her swapped to avoid the defects the doctor warned us about.”
“WHAT?!” she yelled. “You can’t be serious!”
“But I am Rose, and I’m telling you because I’m done caring for a child that ain’t even mine!”
“What?” Rose asked, flabbergasted.
“I also think it’s best we part ways now because this family is no longer a perfect one, not with this mess,” Jim replied.
Rose was shocked, and she watched him pack his things and leave their home in a daze. She held out hope he would return, but after a day, she decided he wouldn’t.
She took the child to a hospital and ran a DNA test that proved he had been right. Confused and hurt, she reached out to her mom, who advised her to get rid of the adopted child.
“He’s not even yours, don’t spend more on him, find your own kid,” the woman said.
“How can you say that mom? This is a child I raised with love for the past two years, I will not abandon him.”
She ended the conversation determined to raise the boy and also track down her daughter. To that end, she paid a visit to Dr. Scott and threatened to expose her as a fraud if she didn’t tell her where her biological child went.
The woman gave her directions, and Rose tracked the family down. They were wealthy and had treated her daughter, so she was already healthy.
Rose revealed all that she had learned and showed them the DNA evidence, shocking them. “This only happens in movies,” the other woman, Ally, had gasped.
“This is truly terrible,” her husband Steve added.
Out of pity, they helped Rose treat the boy, and a year later, he was good as new. They all decided to stay in touch rather than exchange kids again, so the boy and girl grew up together.
When they came of age, the adults revealed what had happened to them, but the children did not mind. “That just means we have two families,” they had chorused, and Rose said an internal prayer of gratitude. All’s well that ends well.
