"Congratulations Victoria , it's a beautiful boy..! That was tough but you handled it beautifully. You are almost there , we're just going to take care of the placenta now..." 

These are the last faint words that Victoria hears as the wave of dizziness washes over her, the edges of her vision darkening as if someone has just dimmed the light in the room.

The sounds around her , _ voices , footsteps, the hum of the machines , becoming  distant , muffled like she is sinking underwater.

Her heart thunders in her ears but even that begins to fade , leaving only an insistent whine that pulses with the last fragrance of consciousness.

And then''' nothing!

The world slips away entirely, her thoughts dissolves

and everything goes black , like a curtain being pulled across the stage.

...

Four hours later,

*

At first, there was nothing but darkness_a thick, smothering void that seemed to stretch on endlessly.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, the world begins to filter back in, faint and distant.

There is a dull, throbbing ache in her whole body .

Sounds start to reach her in fragmented waves, sharp and jarring: the beeping of a machine, muted voices speaking in low tones.

Her eyelids flutters, heavy and unwilling to open. The light is blinding when she finally pries them apart, a painful glare that forces her to squint.

The room swims around her in a haze—colors bleeding together, shapes shifting in and out of focus.

She blinks, disoriented, struggling to piece together where she is, what had happened.

The air feels thick, her breathing shallow, and for a moment, she isn't sure if she can move at all.

Gradually, the fog lifts.

She becomes aware of the cool air against her skin, the scratchy texture of the blanket beneath her fingertips, the faint antiseptic smell that clang to everything.

She tries to sit up but her limbs are sluggish, uncooperative, like waking from a dream that has left her trapped halfway between sleep and reality.

Her heart lightens as memory flickers back,  disjointed fragments of what came before,  and with it, a rush of clarity.

She is back.

"My baby.. my baby boy , Ryan..." she shouts at once looking around , again trying to sit up but the sluggish responsible parts of her body won't let her .

The nurse she hadn't seen sitting some feet away walks towards the bed Victoria is lying .

In her arms there's a baby who is carefully cradled in them , wrapped snugly in soft, white towels that seem too big for its tiny body.

The towels are freshly warm, cocooning the newborn in a protective bundle, only a glimpse of pink skin and delicate fingers visible from beneath the folds.

The nurse moves with practiced care, the baby resting peacefully, as if oblivious to the world outside its warm, towel-wrapped sanctuary.

,,

As if the other nurse and the doctor who had helped Victoria deliver sensed her consciousness , they walk in the room immediately , initially there was only one nurse.

The nurse who had the baby lays it on Victoria's chest.

Victoria smiles with a contented broad smile as tears flow from her eyes , gowing sideways .

But her smile dims immediately when she hears what the nurse who gave her the baby say....

"Victoria , I heard you call Ryan , is that the name you decided to give your baby? Well , it's a sweet name but you can't name her that, it's not a girl's name, what about... "

Victoria finds herself cutting off the nurse with a haze of confusion. "Wait, hold on,,,  what do you mean by that? What do you mean by it's not a boy but a _ !" she blurts out, her voice sharper than intended.

As she spoke, her words blurred together in her mind, each word more tangled than the last.

She hadn't meant to interrupt, but the words slipped out almost reflexively, a desperate attempt to slow down the spinning chaos in her mind.

Her sentence hang unfinished in the air, and for a moment, there is an awkward silence.

She can feel them staring at her with the faces that she doesn't care to analyze now because she is swept away by the urgent need for clarity. She needs answers before she drowns in the confusion.

"You delivered a baby girl not a boy."  The tall dark doctor's rigid voice vibrates across the room .

Despite of the slight pain that Victoria is still feeling , she sits up putting the baby beside her on the bed .

She unwraps the towels off the baby's body and the moment she sees what she wanted to confirm, her hands stops midway of unwrapping the rest of the body.

The world around her freezes, her breath catching as she tries to make sense of what she is seeing, she heard the doctor say she delivered a boy but now...

It feels as though she is staring at a puzzle with missing pieces, an image that should make sense but refuses to fall into place.

Her mind scrambles, racing to understand, but every answer slips through her fingers like sand.

She blinks , half-expecting the scene to dissolve, yet it remains , just as strange, just as wrong, leaving her rooted in place, caught somewhere between wonder and confusion .

"Nn..no.. no... this is not my baby!" She unfreezes with much sureness and confidence. "I heard you say I delivered a boy, I remember clearly! And even if you didn't say it.. I still know I was carrying a baby boy ! So this is not my baby! I want my baby!!" She shouts getting off the bed , it's been just some hours and she hasn't recovered well from the delivery process yet .

When she woke up she found herself cleaned and in a clean gown , but now she's even worse than she was before she was cleaned because of the blood that is flowing like a running tap from the moment she confirmed the gender of the baby she was given as hers.

The two nurses and the doctor try to force her back on the bed so that they can try and stop the blood flow but Victoria has completely lost it , she's more of a mad woman now.

She is unwilling to accept that this little girl laying there on bed , crying like she has been bitten by something,,, is hers.

"You passed out , you didn't even see the baby you delivered, how sure are you that you delivered a boy , maybe you just wanted a boy and when you passed out , you had something like a dream, maybe..." one nurse tries to explain but even so , Victoria is not giving her a chance to do it!

"No!" She screams. "Congratulations Victoria , it's a beautiful boy...! I heard that before I passed out! You said it!!" She screams pointing at the doctor .

"Am not crazy! I know I delivered a boy!" She holds the doctor's scrubs at the neck level shaking him.  "I won't let anyone take advantage of me again! Am reporting this to the police!"  She says heading out of the room , people are now gathering around the scene ; doctors, nurses and some patients.

The fact that Victoria looks really wrecked , confused , broken , her hair messed up , everyone looking at her would say she has a mental problem.

Her figure hovers in the dim hallway, cloaked in the faded blue of a hospital gown that hang from her shoulders like a ghostly shroud.

The fabric, thin and worn, shifts with her every erratic movement, trailing behind her in an unsettling rhythm.

Her hair tangled and wild, framed eyes that holds a fierce, unfocused gleam_eyes that are darting around, seeming to see things no one else can.

She has completely lost it , she still doesn't know how to process everything but one thing she doesn't even want to think of is that someone exchanged her baby and gave her the baby that is not hers.

She can't believe she waited to see her baby for all those nine months , only not to ever see him .

The baby might have been just a fetus in her womb but it is what kept her company and gave her the courage to go on with life no matter what . Now she can't believe she has lost him before even seeing him.

The gown, with its open back and flimsy ties, only heightens the sense of frailty and chaos surrounding her.

She picks a surgical scalpel from it's rack , threatening those who try to go near her .

But before she goes far , again dizziness sweeps her away , her knees buckles , the ground seeming to rush up to meet her as gravity takes over .

In that short time Victoria passes out , they take care of her bleeding and then the doctor makes a report to transfer her to a mental hospital .

He also contacts the Brookhaven children's home which is some few kilometres away from the hospital  , he gives the report and within the shortest time the baby is taken away to the children's home .