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current, from exactly three months ago.
    We have an update tonight on a story Fox 7 first told you about in January. A comatose Webster County, Kentucky, woman has given birth to a healthy baby girl. Ashley Chaney was allegedly beaten by her ex-boyfriend and remains unresponsive in a nursing home. Chaney delivered the five-pound baby girl in late May. Thomas Matthew Yancy is charged with beating Chaney and putting her in a coma…
    Tara shuddered. Despite the fact she had no memory of her own assault, she pictured herself being hit on the head by Alex’s ex-husband. After she had come out of her coma, when she’d interviewed the Central City law officer who had found her, he’d described how she was sprawled lifeless on the wet ground. Could she have been harboring a new life within her?
    After shooting Alex and attacking Tara, Clay had fled again, taking Claire with him. But he’d made the mistake of speeding and had been pulled over near Grand Junction. Ballistics later proved his rifle, found in the cab of his truck, killed Alex; it still had Tara’s hair and blood on its butt.
    The law officer’s exact words echoed in Tara’s mind: “You were sprawled lifeless on the ground.” She lay lifeless there—and for long months after that, first in a rescue helicopter, then a Denver E.R., then intensive care, and finally, at the Lohan Clinic. How could she have produced another life?
    No, she still didn’t believe that possibility. It was rare—extremely rare, doctors said. So what was wrong with Dr. Holbrook? Was he just looking for his moment of fame, a newspaper article or TV segment, like these quoted doctors? An article in a medical journal? No way a comatose pregnancy and delivery could have happened to her. But then, she’d been in hell all those months, helpless, lost to herself and others, except for some sounds she thought she heard, and a relentless parade of nightmares she sometimes thought she could almost recall.
    All that time she’d been in the coma, could something as momentous as childbirth have occurred?
    Tara jolted alert and looked at her big office clock. Too late to make the phone call to Jen now. That would be like getting a second opinion, since she’d been her ob-gyn for years and hadn’t left the area until Tara was comatose. Though her former physician and friend had drifted away from her, she was calling Dr. Jennifer DeMar first thing in the morning.
    Tara had finally fallen asleep when a scream shredded the silence of the night. She awoke instantly. Claire! One of Claire’s nightmares. She used to have them every night, but now they only happened when something set her off. Perhaps Nick’s homecoming had.
    Tara ran for Claire’s bedroom before she realized she hadn’t put a robe on over her T-shirt and panties, in case Nick came running, too. But the child was shrieking, “No, no, don’t hurt her!”
    Tara didn’t turn back even when she heard Nick thudding up the steps from his room in the basement. It was nicely finished down there with a Franklin stove for warmth, a bathroom and sofa with its Hide-A-Bed. Right now she wished it was farther away or he was a sounder sleeper.
    “It’s all right, sweetie,” she crooned to Claire, and clicked on the bedside lamp to add to the wan night-light that was always on. “Just another bad dream. I’m here.”
    Tara scooted her bare legs under the covers next to the quaking child as Nick’s big form filled the doorway. He was in Jockey shorts and a cutoff gray T-shirt that showed his flat stomach. Tara cradled Claire, who wound her arms tight around her.
    “They were shouting,” Claire choked out through such thick sobs her words were barely discernible. “He said he’d kill her. He locked me in my room. Mommy was screaming my name…then a big bang.”
    “It’s over. You’re here and safe now,” Tara whispered, rocking her like a baby. “It’s all right.”
    “It isn’t! He’s going to kill her all over again.”
    When