Page 2 of The Right to Remain

“You promise?”

“Yes. Promise.”

It took twenty minutes to reach Jackson and almost that long to find a parking space. They hurried through the double doors at the main entrance, cut across the busy lobby, and got in line behind twopregnant women who were ahead of them at the registration desk. Neither appeared to be in labor, but the Florida Department of Health was advising all women near their due date to go to a hospital no later than four hours before Hurricane Avery made landfall. The eye of the storm was at least eighteen hours away—and Avery could still make a merciful turn north—but nervous mothers-to-be were already pouring in. Helena was nearly about to burst by the time they reached the head of the line.

“We’re here to see Elle Carpenter,” Helena told the woman at the desk.

“She arrived here in labor about two hours ago,” added Owen.

“I’m sorry, but we are not allowing any visitors other than a designated birthing partner in the maternity ward. The hurricane warning has put us way beyond capacity.”

“We’re not visitors,” said Helena. “We’re the parents. Elle is a teenager. We’re adopting.”

“I see,” said the receptionist. “That sounds like it would be an exception. But administration told me ‘no visitors, no exceptions.’”

“Please, we’ve waited so long for this,” said Helena.

“Which adoption agency are you using?”

They’d worked with an agency before, and both times the biological mother had changed her mind. Elle and her mother had come to them through Owen’s business partner. “There’s no agency. It’s a private adoption.”

“Can I see the contract?”

Helena looked at her husband. “Owen, did you bring the contract?”

“It’s on file at South Miami Hospital,” he said, and then to the receptionist: “That’s where the baby was supposed to be born, before the storm came.”

The receptionist sighed. “I’m sorry, but—”

“Wait!” said Helena. “I have it on my phone.”

She pulled up the email attachment from their lawyer, handed her phone with her driver’s license to the receptionist, and then added one last plea in desperation.

“I’m begging you,” said Helena. “This has been five years of misery.”

It took only a minute for the response to come, but it felt much longer to Helena.

“Elle Carpenter is in room four thirteen. I can’t promise they won’t ask you to leave when you get upstairs, but congratulations.”

Helena thanked her during the eternity it took for a machine to print out access badges for them, and they rushed to the first available elevator.

Overcrowdeddid not begin to describe what they saw as the elevator doors parted on the maternity ward. The hallways were lined with pregnant women. Some were in wheelchairs or on gurneys. A few were seated in chairs borrowed from the waiting room. Others walked with no apparent destination in mind, breathing in deeply, breathing out slowly. Overworked nurses hurried from patient to patient. A cacophonous mix of English, Spanish, and Creole, punctuated by the sudden cry of a newborn from a birthing suite, made it difficult for Helena and Owen to hear each other speak.

“It’s worse than I-95 at five p.m. on a Friday,” said Helena.

The hub of activity was a four-sided, centralized nursing station, which was surrounded by rooms and suites. Hallways to more rooms fed into the station like the spokes of a wheel. Helena and Owen started toward the nurse behind the desk, but a woman cut through the crowd and stopped them. Helena hadn’t seen Elle’s mother since the signing of the adoption contract. Serena Carpenter pulled them aside and into the crowded waiting room.

“So glad I found you,” said Serena.

“Is everything okay?” asked Helena.

“The delivery could not have gone better.”

Helena’s heart nearly skipped a beat. “He’s here?”

“Born about an hour ago. Nine pounds, six ounces.”

Helena hugged her husband, and she wiped away a tear as she broke their embrace.