An hour later, she came back. She had a little hand-written note on a piece of yellow scrap paper.

It read: “Leo is breathing on his own now. He has a patch of dark hair and the tiniest fingernails. He is sleeping like a little angel.”

She reached into her deep pocket and pulled out a small, knitted blue cap with a yellow star. The yellow star was a little crooked, and there was a loose thread hanging from the crown.

“I made this for him,” she said softly. “He’s wearing a green one now, but you keep this one. It’s for when you finally get to hold him.”

For 10 days, that woman was my only lifeline. I called her Sarah because that was the name on her faded badge. Every single night, she would show up around midnight. She brought me warm broth from a thermos she kept in her bag. She rubbed my back when the post-surgery cramps made me scream in my throat. She never seemed to be in a hurry.

Not on night three when my fever spiked again.

Not on night five when Tyler called to say he was staying an extra day in Michigan because the weather was nice.

Sarah just sat there with me, holding my hand through the plastic guardrails. She never complained about the hospital or the staff. She just kept her eyes on me, humming some old lullaby I couldn’t quite place.

When I was finally discharged, I tried to find her to say goodbye. The daytime receptionist just stared at me like I was speaking a foreign language.

“We don’t have a night nurse named Sarah on this floor,” she said, not even looking up from her computer screen. “You must have had one of the floaters from the third floor.”

I was too tired to argue. I took Leo home in his car seat, clutching the little blue knit cap with the crooked star, and I tried to start my life.

Two years went by. Tyler and I got divorced six months after Leo was born. It turned out he didn’t like the sound of a baby crying any more than he liked high-risk pregnancies. I ended up renting a small, drafty duplex near the railroad tracks in Terre Haute. I took a job as a night clerk at a local hardware store just to pay the heating bills.

Money was tight, and my back still ached from the surgery, but Leo was thriving. He was a wild, happy toddler who loved to wear that blue knit cap even in the middle of July.

One Tuesday night, I was sitting on my worn green sofa, folding a pile of Leo’s tiny t-shirts. The TV was playing in the background, just a low murmur of the 10 o’clock news to keep me company. I was half-asleep, my mind drifting through bills and grocery lists.

Then the news anchor’s voice changed. It got serious, that dramatic tone they use when something bad has happened close to home.

“A major security breach has been uncovered at St. Jude’s Hospital,” the anchor announced. “A local woman has been arrested after spending five years posing as a registered nurse in the neonatal and maternity wards.”