Chapter 4

Eventually, a passing police car noticed the commotion. The flashing blue and red lights painted the snowy scene in harsh, alternating colors. I saw the officers talk to Mark and Isabella, their professional calm a stark contrast to the couple's panicked theatrics. After a few minutes, an ambulance was called. The baby, Chloe, had been exposed to the freezing temperatures for far too long.

I learned the details the next day, not because I sought them out, but because my father called me. He was the head of the city's largest hospital, and news of a baby with severe hypothermia, brought in with two completely unprepared and hysterical parents, had reached his desk.

"The baby has some frostbite on her fingers and toes," my father said, his voice grave. "It's not life-threatening, but she'll likely have permanent nerve damage. She'll always be sensitive to the cold, and there might be some loss of dexterity. The doctors gave her parents a piece of their mind."

A cold, sharp thrill went through me. Not of pleasure at a child's suffering, but of the perfect, undeniable causality of it all. In her past life, Chloe had been a gifted pianist. I had spent a fortune on the best tutors, the finest Steinway piano. Her hands were her pride and joy, a symbol of the "superior genes" she lorded over me. Now, because of her own parents' negligence on the very first day of her life, that potential was forever damaged. A cruel, ironic justice.

The head of pediatrics, a no-nonsense woman I knew well, had apparently torn into Mark and Isabella.

"She asked them what on earth they were thinking, leaving a newborn in a freezing car," my father relayed. "She told them they were lucky the child was alive, and that their selfishness had permanently harmed her."

The official condemnation from a medical authority must have been a shock to them. Mark, who always thought he could talk his way out of anything, and Isabella, who believed her beauty and budding fame made her untouchable, were faced with the unvarnished truth of their failure. I could picture Mark's face, a mixture of indignation and fear, as the doctor dressed him down. He would hate being told he was a bad father.

I felt a dark satisfaction. Chloe' s injury was a physical manifestation of their parental failure, a permanent reminder of their incompetence. In our past life, Chloe blamed me for everything that went wrong in her life. She constructed a fantasy where her biological parents were perfect, god-like figures. This time, from day one, she would bear the scars of their reality.

I could already hear the narrative forming in their twisted minds. According to a nurse my father spoke to, Isabella was overheard in the hospital hallway, not expressing concern for Chloe, but blaming her.

"If she hadn't been crying so much, none of this would have happened," Isabella had hissed to Mark. "She' s so needy."

It was breathtakingly selfish. Blaming a newborn for being a newborn. Mark, in turn, was likely blaming Isabella for her vanity, and both of them were surely blaming me in their hearts for not taking the bait. The seeds of resentment between them, and towards their own child, were being sown in the sterile, unforgiving environment of a hospital ward. Their future together, a future built on blaming everyone but themselves, was beginning to take shape.