Part 2
The room fell into a suffocating silence. The steady beep of the heart monitor seemed to slow down, echoing the sudden paralysis that had gripped Dr. Robert Wright. The nurse, holding the crying newborn, looked at the doctor with growing confusion. She had worked with him for over a decade and had never seen him lose his composure. Not once.
Dr. Wright took a step forward, his legs heavy, as if moving through deep water. His eyes never left the baby’s face. He pulled off his medical gloves with trembling hands, dropping them carelessly onto the tray. When he reached out to touch the baby’s tiny, wrinkled forehead, his fingers shook so violently that he drew them back.
He looked down at the medical chart in his hands again. His eyes scanned the lines, focusing on the section for the father’s information. Joanna had written it down in a moments of desperate honesty when she arrived: Logan Wright.
Dr. Wright’s breath hitched. A tear slipped down his cheek, tracing a path through the deep lines of his weathered face.
Joanna watched him from the bed, her heart pounding against her ribs. The exhaustion of a twelve-hour labor was instantly replaced by a cold, sharp panic. She clutched the hospital blanket tightly to her chest. Why was this doctor looking at her child this way? Had something gone wrong? Was her baby sick?
“Doctor?” Joanna’s voice was barely a whisper, cracked and terrified. “What’s wrong? Please tell me. Is my son okay?”
Dr. Wright didn’t answer immediately. He closed his eyes, taking a deep, ragged breath to steady himself, but when he opened them, the tears flowed even faster. He looked away from the baby and turned his gaze directly to Joanna. For the first time, he really looked at her—the dark circles under her eyes, the pale skin, the utter loneliness radiating from her small frame.
“He is perfect,” Dr. Wright managed to say, his voice thick with emotion, sounding nothing like the authoritative chief of medicine he usually was. “He is absolutely beautiful.”
“Then why are you crying?” Joanna asked, her voice trembling. “You’re scaring me.”
The doctor stepped closer to the side of her bed. He pulled a small, silver pocket watch from his coat—a family heirloom he carried every single day. He opened the latch and held it out for Joanna to see. Inside the cover was a old photograph of a young boy with the exact same uniquely shaped, piercing blue eyes as the newborn baby, and a tiny, distinct mole just beneath his left ear.
Joanna gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. She recognized those eyes. She knew that mole. She had traced it with her fingers a thousand times while lying in bed next to the man who had abandoned her.
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“Logan,” Joanna whispered, her eyes widening in disbelief.
Dr. Wright nodded slowly, a broken smile appearing through his tears. “Logan is my son. I am his father. And this beautiful little boy… is my grandson.”
