My Cousin Said He Found This Baby During The Flood—But The Building Was Completely Sealed
He’s been with Search & Rescue for as long as I can remember.
I’ve even seen him dive into pitch-black floodwaters without backup, when the sonar glitched and everyone else hesitated, because he couldn’t live with the thought that maybe—just maybe—someone was still down there waiting. He was fearless, relentless, almost unshakable. That’s why the photo unsettled me so deeply—because in all those years, I had never seen him look like this. His eyes, even through the blur of a satellite phone image, told me something was wrong.
He sent the photo with only a short message: “We pulled the baby from Building 6.” At first, I didn’t question it—he’s sent dozens of these updates over the years. But then the words began to settle in my mind, and unease spread like a slow poison. Because I knew Building 6. Everyone in the family did. It wasn’t residential. It wasn’t a place where a baby should have been. Building 6 had once been a small, cozy bakery, the kind that filled the street with the smell of bread in the mornings. But years ago, it was sold, gutted, and converted into a short-term office rental. Cubicles, desks, flickering fluorescent lights—cold, impersonal space. No cribs. No families. No reason for an infant to ever be there. And the front door? Reinforced steel, padlocked, rust creeping around the hinges. According to the records, it hadn’t been opened in years. That’s what made the photo so impossible.
I didn’t want to say anything. The thought itself felt cruel, twisted—like my mind was playing tricks on me in the middle of grief and disaster. But the longer I stared, the harder it was to breathe. My chest tightened. A part of me wanted to believe it was a coincidence, some mass-produced fabric bought by dozens of families. Yet deep down, I knew it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. The stitches weren’t generic. They were hers. Every cloud slightly uneven, every star a little different in size. This wasn’t mass-market—it was handmade. Unique. Impossible to confuse with anything else.
Before I could bring myself to confront him about it, my phone rang. It was my cousin. Her voice was unsteady, trembling in a way I’d only heard once before—the night of the funeral. She didn’t ask how I was or if I’d seen the news. She only said one thing: “You need to come over. Now. It’s about the baby.”
