The words struck harder than the slap that came before them. I didn’t cry. I couldn’t. Because in that moment, even through the pain, I knew they were wrong. They thought I’d refused to donate bone marrow to my sister, Emily, out of spite. They didn’t know the truth—that months ago, I had secretly taken the compatibility test. Not out of defiance, but out of desperate hope.
I still remembered sitting in the sterile clinic room back in March, my heart racing as the nurse labeled the blood sample. When the call came a week later, the doctor’s voice had been oddly hesitant. “Lena,” he said, “you’re not a match for your sister. In fact… you’re not biologically related to her—or your parents.”
I had laughed, thinking it was impossible. Some clerical mistake. But when the second test confirmed it, the ground beneath me cracked. I had been living someone else’s life, in someone else’s family.
Now, as I watched my mother collapse beside Emily’s bed, sobbing, I wanted to tell her everything. But how could I destroy her more? How could I say that the daughter she’d loved, the one she’d raised for twenty-four years, wasn’t hers?
I turned and walked away before my voice could betray me. Down the hallway, my reflection followed in the glass—a stranger’s face staring back.
I didn’t go home that night. I drove aimlessly through the dim streets of Seattle until dawn broke, painting the sky in washed-out pinks. Every intersection felt like a choice I didn’t want to make. By morning, I found myself in front of the small clinic that had shattered my identity.
Dr. Halpern, the genetic counselor, looked startled to see me. “Lena, I told you everything we could find. There’s no record of an adoption—”
“Then find one,” I interrupted, my voice cracking. “Someone switched me. There has to be an answer.”
He hesitated, then sighed. “There’s something you should see.”
He opened a file drawer and pulled out my old test report. At the bottom, a note I hadn’t noticed before: Sample flagged for federal verification: potential identity discrepancy.
“Federal verification?” I asked.
“It means your birth record doesn’t fully match your genetic profile,” he said. “It’s rare—but it can happen if there was an error at birth. Or…” He trailed off.
“Or if I was switched in the hospital,” I finished for him.
Over the next week, I dug through archives, called county offices, even hired a private investigator named Mara Quinn. She was a former detective, blunt but kind, and she worked fast. Two weeks later, she found a lead—a newborn reported missing from St. Luke’s Hospital in Portland, Oregon, twenty-four years ago. A baby girl born on the same day as me.
Her name was Grace Morgan.
When Mara showed me the faded photo from the police file, I couldn’t breathe. The infant’s tiny face mirrored the one in my baby pictures. My real face.
“What happened to her?” I whispered.
“She was never found,” Mara said softly. “But if you were switched, then Grace’s parents might still be looking for you.”
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