The sterile scent of the hospital clung to me like a shroud. Another day, another IV drip, another slow crawl towards a recovery that felt as distant as the stars. My body was a battlefield, ravaged by a surgery that had snatched away weeks of my life and left me feeling hollowed out, both physically and emotionally. Lying there, staring at the muted morning light filtering through the blinds, my mind often drifted to what I’d lost, to the emptiness that had settled deep in my bones years ago. The kind of loss you never really heal from, just learn to live around.
A soft knock. A new nurse entered, a young woman with kind eyes and an efficient air. She smiled politely, checked my charts, and began adjusting the pump beside my bed. I watched her, mostly out of boredom, but also a quiet appreciation for the gentle way she moved. She must be new on the ward, I thought, observing her careful, deliberate actions.
Then, my breath caught. A jolt, sharp and sudden, shot through me, making my already fragile heart race. It wasn’t her uniform, or her hair, or anything obvious. It was something small, barely visible, nestled at her collarbone. A tiny, silver locket.
No. It couldn’t be.
An angry woman | Source: Freepik
My eyes, dry and tired, focused with a desperate intensity I hadn’t felt in years. The locket was small, no bigger than my thumbnail. It was a delicate, intricate piece, engraved with a single, perfectly rendered star. And embedded in its center, a tiny, almost imperceptible, blush-pink sapphire.
IT WAS THE SAME LOCKET.
My vision blurred, the room tilting. I squeezed my eyes shut, tried to blink away the phantom image, the impossible apparition. Just a similar design. A coincidence. There are millions of lockets in the world. But my mind screamed otherwise. I knew that locket. I had held that locket. I had chosen that specific, rare pink sapphire myself. A soft pink, for a girl. A single star, because she was going to be our little star.
My hands trembled under the thin sheet. I remembered the day I bought it, years ago, when my belly was round with hope and fear. I’d spent hours searching for something perfect, something unique, a token for the tiny life growing inside me. My partner had loved it, too. We’d talked for hours about how our daughter would wear it one day, a precious heirloom.
But she never did.
“Are you alright?” the nurse asked, her voice soft with concern. She must have seen my sudden pallor, the way my knuckles were white against the sheets.
I could only nod, my throat suddenly dry, constricted. I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t formulate a single word. My gaze was fixed, glued to that locket, a beacon of impossible memory. It hung there, innocent and beautiful, around her neck.
A distressed man covering his face | Source: Freepik
She continued her work, oblivious to the seismic shift occurring within me. How? Why? Where did she get it? The questions formed a frantic, silent chorus in my mind, each one more agonizing than the last. I wanted to reach out, to snatch it, to examine every tiny detail, but my body felt like lead.
Finally, she finished. She smiled again, a genuine, warm smile. “Just call if you need anything. I’ll be back to check on you in an hour.” She turned to leave.
My voice, when it finally came, was a raspy whisper. “Your locket…”
She paused, turning back. Her hand went to the tiny silver charm, a gentle, familiar gesture. “Oh, this?” she said, a faint blush on her cheeks. “It’s old. A gift.”
My heart pounded, a frantic drum against my ribs. “It’s… beautiful,” I managed, my voice barely steady. “Is there a story behind it?”
She hesitated, her eyes drifting towards the window, a thoughtful, distant look on her face. “Not much of one, I suppose. My adoptive mother gave it to me when I was a teenager. Said it was the only thing my… my birth father left for her to give to me.”
The air left my lungs in a silent whoosh. EVERY OUNCE OF OXYGEN VANISHED. The world spun. My vision tunneled.
MY BIRTH FATHER.
The words echoed, reverberated, crushing me under their weight. My adoptive mother gave it to me. My birth father.
She continued, a soft, almost reverent tone in her voice. “She said he told her it was for his ‘little star.’ Said he had another daughter, born the same day as my adoptive sister, and he always thought of them both as his stars.”
A cold, paralyzing dread washed over me, colder than any operating room. My vision swam. Not only had my baby not died, as I’d been told, as I had grieved for, for decades. Not only had my partner, the man I loved, my baby’s father, lied to me, to my face, sharing in a grief that was entirely fabricated.
A judge with a wooden gavel | Source: Pexels
But he had given our daughter, the one I believed was lost, to another woman. And then, he had had another child with that woman, a new “star” to replace the one he had stolen from me.
And now, here she was. My daughter. My lost star. A kind, gentle nurse, wearing the proof of a lie so profound, so devastating, it had just torn my entire world into a million, irreparable pieces. She looked at me, waiting for a response, her hand still resting on the locket.
MY PARTNER BETRAYED ME. MY BABY WAS ALIVE. HE GAVE HER AWAY.
The truth slammed into me, hard and merciless. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak. All I could do was stare at the locket, at the star, and at the kind, unknowing face of the daughter I’d mourned for a lifetime. The daughter I’d finally found, only to realize the depth of the betrayal that had kept her from me.
