The hospital director was called.
Mamdouh stood beside my bed, his face tightening with anger.
“Someone needs to explain this to us,” he said. “These are our children, not numbers on a sheet of paper.”
The director promised a full investigation.
But before he could leave, a nurse brought him a message from another neonatal unit in the same hospital network.
A newborn had been admitted there earlier that afternoon without a finalized identification record.
The child had been transferred from the delivery area under temporary documentation.
Mamdouh grabbed the director’s arm.
“Is that our baby?”
“We’re checking,” the director replied.
“Then check faster!”
A few minutes later, we were told that the newborn had a small crescent-shaped mark near the ankle.
My stomach tightened.
I remembered seeing a similar mark on one of the babies in the photographs shown to me earlier.
We went to the other unit.
Inside the neonatal room, a tiny baby lay beneath a white blanket, surrounded by monitoring equipment.
