An Act of Persuasion - By Stephanie Doyle Page 0,99

party had been ambushed. All of them killed. Mark remembered the way Ben had looked then, as if the responsibility of the world sat on his shoulders...and he’d failed to uphold it. That expression was nothing compared to how he appeared now.

Now, in this moment, he looked as though he’d been ambushed. As though he’d been killed.

Mark thought of Anna and tried to contain the sick feeling in his stomach that something was horribly wrong. Ben hadn’t been coherent enough to explain the situation. Had only said that she was in danger. When Mark had checked at the admissions desk, they had told him she was still alive. They couldn’t give him any details of her condition, but they could give him a status.

Critical.

“Ben, what happened?”

Dazed, Ben leaned back in the chair. “Placenta abruption? I couldn’t understand everything they were saying. It was so fast. Her blood pressure was high, they said, and there was a partial separation. It caused her to bleed. She was bleeding so much. They did an emergency C-section.”

Mark swallowed. “The baby?”

Ben looked at him, his eyes unfocused. “I haven’t named her yet. I want Anna to do it. The doctor said she’s small at four and a half pounds, but her lungs are fully formed. She’s in the NICU unit now. But I don’t want to see her yet. Not until I can see her with Anna.”

He seemed defensive about that. The nurses had probably already asked him if he wanted to see his daughter and he’d felt guilty for refusing. Mark understood though. He knew that if Ben saw his daughter without Anna by his side, he would have to acknowledge she was still in danger.

“Okay.”

“She was hemorrhaging so much. They said the blood loss caused her to go into shock. But they’re replacing it now. Transfusion.” He laughed harshly and held out his blood stained arms. “They wouldn’t let me give blood. I couldn’t even do that.”

Mark took a deep breath. “Downstairs they said her status is critical.”

“She’s in a coma,” Ben said, sounding as if he had to push the word out of his mouth. “The shock was too much. She didn’t wake up after the general anesthesia wore off. They don’t know— They don’t know anything at this point.”

The sick feeling that had been in Mark’s stomach since he received Ben’s call turned to dread.

“She’ll wake up,” Mark said optimistically. She had to. Because he didn’t think Ben would survive if she didn’t. The man who had always been so calm under pressure, so cool under fire, was, simply put, unhinged. Like he’d lost his grip on the world. Yeah, he sat here, his jeans stiff with blood, but he wasn’t really part of the world around him.

“High blood pressure. We were fighting. I caused this. I can’t believe we were fighting this close to—”

Mark grabbed his arm. “Don’t. You can’t start playing the ‘what if’ game. This happened. The baby survived. Anna will wake up. You’ll get through this. You need to stay focused on what is and not on what might have been.”

Ben nodded, but Mark could tell his words weren’t penetrating.

They sat for a time and the nonaction was killing Mark. He should be doing something. Helping Ben in some way. Calling family...although he knew neither Ben nor Anna had any. Anna was Ben’s family. And Ben was hers. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not to them.

“Did you find her parents?”

The question startled Mark out of his thoughts. He thought about the path he’d followed after Marge had told him about the other man who had come in inquiring about fake names on a birth certificate. Like Ben had, he was sure, Mark found the records of those who had been admitted for delivery without insurance on the day Anna was born.

A young girl, no more than eighteen years old, had experienced complications during delivery and had to have an emergency C-section. Because the child had been sent to the NICU and the mother needed additional care the father had been responsible for giving the hospital all the information needed for payment and, of course, the paperwork for the birth certificate.

Not only had those names been fake, but so had the address he’d listed. The only thing he must not have realized is that when the pregnant girl had first been admitted, she had given her real name: Jennifer James.

From there, tracking down Jennifer hadn’t been difficult at all. The story Mark eventually found in the papers six