Part 8

Part 8. A Call Across Thirty-One Years

For several seconds, I could not move. My mother's confession seemed to shrink the hospital room around us. Fabian stood beside my bed with his arms folded and his expression controlled, while my mother sat near the window, twisting a tissue between her trembling fingers.

"Your father has hired a lawyer?" I asked.

She nodded slowly. "He says Fabian has no legal right to be involved in your medical decisions. He is preparing papers claiming you are incapable of making decisions because of your condition. He wants you transferred to another hospital before you can speak to anyone."

I turned to Fabian. "Can he do that?"

"Not simply because he is your father," he replied. "I am your attending physician, and you still have the right to make your own medical decisions. Unless a proper legal process establishes otherwise, he cannot take that authority away from you."

My mother lowered her eyes. "He said he would make sure you never saw Fabian again."

I remembered being eighteen, exhausted and frightened, with my father standing beside my hospital bed and a folder in his hands. Back then, I had been powerless to stop him. But I was forty-nine now, and the son he had taken from me was standing within reach. I was not going to let him steal another day from us.

"Fabian, I need to speak to Luke."

Fabian looked surprised. "Are you sure?"

I nodded. For thirty-one years, I had kept Luke's name from my parents, even when my father demanded to know who had fathered my baby. I had believed silence would protect the man I loved. Now I understood that it had only helped my father control the truth. Fabian took out his phone and opened the contact he had found through Helen's belongings, then placed it in my hand.

My fingers trembled as I stared at the number. I pressed the call button and listened to it ring twice before a voice answered.

"Hello?"

His voice was older and deeper, but I recognized it immediately.

"Luke?" I whispered.

"Who is this?"

"It is me."

Silence followed, and then I heard him take a sharp breath.

"Is that really you?"

Tears slipped down my cheeks. "Yes. It is me, Luke Bennett. I know thirty-one years have passed, but I need you to hear the truth. I never abandoned our son. I never chose adoption. My parents told me he had been given to another family, and I spent years believing I had lost him."

A broken sound came through the phone, and then Luke began to cry.

"They told me he died," he said. "Your father came to see me after the birth. He said there had been complications and the baby had not survived. He also told me you wanted nothing to do with me and had decided to leave town."

I tightened my grip on the phone. "He told you our baby was dead?"

"Yes. I was eighteen. Your father cornered me outside my parents' house. He said if I ever came back, he would make sure my family paid for it. He told me there was nothing left for me to fight for."

My chest tightened. "I waited for you. I never received a single letter. I thought you had simply forgotten us."

"I wrote to you," he replied urgently. "Dozens of letters. I sent them to your parents' address because it was the only one I knew. None of them reached you. After years of silence, I began to believe what your father had said."

Fabian moved closer and rested a hand on my shoulder. His presence gave me the strength to say the words I had waited three decades to speak. I drew a steadying breath and let the truth come out at last.

"Luke, our son is alive."

The silence on the other end seemed endless.

"What?"

"His name is Fabian. He is thirty-one years old. He is a surgeon, and he is standing beside me right now."

I turned the phone toward him.

"Tell him," I whispered.

Fabian leaned closer. "Hello, Luke. My name is Fabian. I was raised by a woman named Helen. I recently discovered that you are my biological father."

For several seconds, there was no answer. Then Luke whispered, "My boy."

Fabian lowered his eyes, and the silver cross around his neck caught the light from the window, revealing the tiny scratch I had recognized from the day he was born.

"I have imagined this moment so many times," Luke said. "I used to wonder whether you had your mother's eyes or whether you would sound like me. I never thought I would actually get to hear your voice."

Fabian swallowed. "I do not know what happens next, but I would like to meet you."

"You will," Luke answered. "I will come to the hospital. I am not coming to claim anything or demand that you call me your father. I just want to meet the son I was told I had lost."

"Please come," I said. "There is so much we need to tell you."

"I will leave as soon as I can. I promise."

When the call ended, I held the phone against my chest. Fabian sat beside me, and for a moment neither of us spoke. My mother watched us with tears in her eyes, her face carrying the weight of everything she had failed to prevent. For the first time in thirty-one years, Luke, Fabian, and I were finally moving toward the same truth, and my father's lies were no longer holding us apart.

Minutes after the call ended, my father walked into the room. A lawyer walked in with him, carrying a hospital transfer form that had already been signed. He ordered Fabian off the case. He did it before Luke could arrive.