There are mistakes in youth, and even in later years one can try to put them right—if the will is there.
Catherine and her husband Stephen have lived together for fourteen years, yet they have never managed to have a child. Catherine works as an economist at a thriving company; Stephen runs a car repair business. They live comfortably and harmoniously—he often buys her gifts. They desperately wanted children, went through countless medical tests, but nothing helped.
One evening Catherine falls asleep quickly, almost as if sinking into nowhere. She sees herself as a young girl in a white room, lying on a narrow bed. A woman stands before her, smiling, holding a bundle. She hands it to Catherine. Catherine peeks inside and sees a newborn baby. She reaches out—then everything vanishes. She wakes with a scream, startling her husband. Alarmed, he begs her to tell him the whole truth.
…It happened that in her second year at university Catherine became pregnant by a fellow student, Dan. He refused to accept responsibility and transferred to another university. When her parents found out, they insisted she get rid of it, but it was too late.
Catherine opens her eyes in the grey silence of a hospital ward. Her body feels foreign, heavy, and a dull ache gnaws in her lower abdomen. She doesn’t immediately recognise where she is, until her gaze fixes on the institutional white wall.
“You’re awake, dear?” a voice says beside her.
Her roommate, Margaret, turns painfully in her bed. Her face is the colour of a wet sheet, with bruised shadows under her eyes. The day before, she gave birth prematurely, and the baby—a boy—could not be saved. Margaret told Catherine this in a quiet, tearful voice, staring at a single point.
Catherine pulls the blanket up to her chin. She is eighteen, terrified, feeling less like a mother and more like a naughty schoolgirl about to be scolded. Footsteps echo in the corridor.
A tall woman enters—the doctor, with tired eyes and grey hair pulled back. Her white coat is cinched tightly at the waist. Behind her comes the nurse, young and plump-cheeked, her face perpetually anxious. In the nurse’s arms is a bundle. White, clean. Not a sound comes from it.
“Catherine,” the doctor says, sitting on the edge of the bed so the wire frame creaks, “we must have a final talk with you. You signed a refusal. But I want you to understand.”
She gently takes the bundle from the nurse. The baby girl inside does not cry. Catherine notices this mechanically—the child is silent, like her mother.
“Look at her,” the doctor says softly. “She is healthy. You can take the paperwork now and go home. The university will grant you a leave of absence. Your parents will help.”
“They won’t,” Catherine breathes, staring at the wall. “They said: either university or… this. Choose.”
“What do you mean, ‘this’?” the nurse interrupts, her voice trembling with indignation. “She is not a thing. She is a living child. Look—she has your eyes. Yours.”
She unfolds the edge of the nappy. Catherine sees the eyes—slightly misty, bluish, not yet able to focus. The baby gazes upward at the ceiling, but it seems to Catherine that she is looking straight at her.
Something inside Catherine stirs. Tightens and releases.
“See?” the nurse is almost crying. “She feels you… She needs only you.”
“Catherine, listen to me, woman to woman,” the doctor says, laying a hand over Catherine’s. “I have seen many like you. And I have seen those who came back here twenty years later because they could not forgive themselves. Refusal stays with you for life. It is a scar. It will not heal.”
The baby whimpers in her sleep. Catherine looks at the girl. Every second counts. She knows that if she says “I’ll keep her,” there will be no turning back. For eight months she has told herself this is not a child but a mistake, a clump of cells, an obstacle. Every morning her parents reminded her:
“You will ruin your future.”
The baby’s father, her classmate Dan, said on the phone:
“I’m not ready. Do something.”
So she did. She carried for nine months, and now they are forcing her to love in one minute.
“Take her away,” she whispers. “I can’t. I don’t want to. I have to study, don’t you understand? I have exams in a month. My own life hasn’t even started yet!”
“What are you doing? You’ll regret it later—it will be too late,” the nurse says, pressing the baby to her chest as if protecting her.
“I am not a mother,” Catherine chokes out, shrinking back against the cold metal bars of the bed. “I don’t want to be one.”
The doctor is silent for a long time. Then she stands, straightens her coat. Something flickers in her eyes—weariness, perhaps condemnation, perhaps pity.
“Very well,” she says flatly. “The papers are ready. You’ll sign the final refusal with the head of the unit.”
She nods to the nurse, who, sobbing quietly, leaves the room carrying the bundle. Silence settles in the ward. Catherine stares at the door behind which her child has just disappeared. She breathes heavily, trying to convince herself she made the right choice. That she is free. That nothing happened.
On the neighbouring bed, Margaret turns to the wall and weeps silently into her pillow. Her baby never cried—he died. Catherine lies with her eyes open, waiting to sign the papers and forget.
She will never forget. Not even many years later, when she wakes in the night to an imagined baby’s cry and sobs into the shoulder of her confused husband. Catherine tells this story now, not raising her eyes. Her voice breaks, words tangle, her fingers nervously twist the edge of the duvet. She expects condemnation, disgust, silent retreat to another room. But Stephen simply listens. When she falls silent, he takes her hand and says:
“Let’s find her.”
She does not believe him. So many years have passed; the child could have been adopted anywhere, even abroad. She signed the documents without reading a word, desperate to flee the maternity ward. But Stephen is stubborn. His business has given him connections; he knows how to negotiate with people. They start at the hospital. Then requests to archives. It takes six months and a sum Catherine prefers not to ask about.
The result is shocking.
“Margaret Yegorovna Tokareva adopted her,” Stephen says, placing a thin folder in front of her. “That same woman who shared your room. She took the girl after you refused.”
Catherine is speechless. Margaret—whose son died, who cried silently into the wall.
“Where are they now?”
“Margaret… died three years ago. The girl lives in a provincial town. With her father.”
“Which father?”
“Margaret’s husband. His name is Victor Tokarev. He is disabled—barely walks after an accident. The girl—her name is Emily—is now nineteen. She didn’t abandon him. She studies by correspondence, works, cares for him.”
Catherine presses her palm to her mouth. Nineteen. Almost the same age she was when she… No, she cannot think about that now.
They drive for four hours. Stephen drives in silence, occasionally glancing at his wife, who clutches her handbag until her knuckles turn white. The town is grey, dusty, with peeling apartment blocks and sparse maple trees. A run-down hotel by the entrance, smelling of old linoleum.
In the morning they go to the address. A five-storey building stands forlornly at the far end of a courtyard; its façade was once painted yellow but has now faded.
“That entrance,” Stephen says, checking his phone.
Catherine takes a step and freezes. A figure emerges from the doorway. A slender young woman, her light brown hair tied in a bun, pushes a wheelchair in front of her. In the chair sits an elderly man with grey stubble and sharp, watchful eyes. The girl pushes the chair easily, habitually, as if she has done nothing else her whole life.
And Catherine suddenly understands why her breath catches. She is looking at her own face. Her own cheekbones. Her own eye shape.
“Hello—are you from social services again?” the girl asks. Her voice is low, weary, defiant. “I already told them on the phone: I am not putting my father anywhere. He is not going into a home. And leave me alone—everything is legal; I am an adult.”
The wheelchair stops. The man lifts his head, squinting at Catherine.
“Emily, don’t get worked up,” he says quietly.
Stephen steps forward with a polite smile.
“We are not from social services.”
Catherine opens her mouth. She must say something. The truth? No, not now. Emily’s face is tense, ready for a blow. To say “I am your mother who abandoned you” means to close that door forever. And Catherine hears her own voice, as if from outside:
“I… I am a relative of Margaret. A second cousin, distant. We haven’t spoken for years, but now… I learned she passed away. I want to help, if I can.”
A silence falls. Emily looks at her from under her brows, distrustful. Then the man in the wheelchair—Victor—slowly straightens as much as his injured back allows. His eyes narrow; something strange flickers in them.
“You…” he whispers, almost soundlessly, so only Catherine can hear. “You are Catherine?”
The blood drains from her face. She nods numbly. Victor glances at Emily, then back at her. And then he says loudly, firmly:
“Darling, she really is a relative of your mother. I remember Margaret mentioning her.”
Emily relaxes slightly but still keeps her hand on the wheelchair’s handle—a gesture of ownership, of protection.
“So what do you propose?”
“We want to help. Here, take some money—for your father’s treatment, for your studies, for living.”
“We don’t need your money,” Emily cuts off.
“Daughter,” Victor says softly. “Don’t be too proud. We’ve got three months of unpaid utility bills. I haven’t bought my medication in a month—it’s too expensive. You sleep on a fold-up bed in the kitchen. Let people help.”
Emily purses her lips. Tears glisten in her eyes, but she blinks them away. She turns to Catherine.
“And why would you do this? What’s your angle?”
“Because I…” Catherine falters, feeling a lump rise in her throat. “Because Margaret was not a stranger to me. And now I want to be near.”
Not everything can be fixed, but sometimes you can start small.
They start small. They transfer money to her card—tentatively at first, then more boldly. Emily stops refusing when Victor needs expensive medication. Then Catherine and Stephen come again, bringing groceries and a lighter wheelchair. Emily grumbles but does not chase them away. Over dinner in the tiny kitchen, Catherine suddenly catches herself laughing—really laughing—at Stephen’s joke, at Victor’s grumbling, at the way Emily wipes her hands on her jeans.
“Move in with us,” Catherine says one day. “To the city.”
“Margaret always dreamed of leaving this place,” Victor says. “She used to say: ‘When Emily grows up, we’ll move to the seaside.’ Not the seaside, but moving close to real family—that’s good too.”
Catherine and Stephen buy them a two-bedroom flat in a new block back in their own city. Ground floor, so the wheelchair has easy access. They renovate, install wide doorways. Emily is silent for three days, then says:
“I don’t know why you’re doing this. But thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Catherine replies. “Just live.”
Victor has an operation at a good hospital. Expensive, complex, risky. But he is stubborn, like his adopted daughter. Six months later he stands—first with a walker, then with a cane. After a year he walks on his own. Emily cries with joy in the bathroom at night, so no one sees.
She transfers to full-time study at the university; Catherine insists she quit her job. Victor even starts going out into the courtyard, sitting on a bench with other old men. Catherine never once says who she really is. And Emily never asks—perhaps she guesses, perhaps she does not want to know. One evening, as they sit in the kitchen of the new flat drinking tea with jam, Emily says suddenly:
“You know, Mum Margaret always said that one day someone would turn up in my life. Someone might get lost, then find their way back…” Catherine smiles, hiding tears.
“Your mother was a wise woman.”
“She was,” Emily nods, and places her hand lightly over Catherine’s—so softly, as if afraid to scare it away. “I’m glad we have relatives now.”
Outside the window the evening city hums. Stephen washes the dishes and whistles. For the first time in many years, Catherine breathes freely.
Not everything can be fixed. Not everything can be brought back. But sometimes you can start over with a quiet thank you, a cup of tea, another person’s hand on yours.
