The Cuckoo

Patience Bellamy is a middle- aged spinster who lives an unremarkable life trying to make ends meet until, one day, she comes home to a basket on her doorstep. In the basket is a baby boy and a note addressed to her by name. In the note, the boy's parents plead with her to raise the baby -- and they warn her not to take him to the doctor's. But why did the parents leave the baby with her? And why don't the parents want the baby taken to the doctor's?

This novella has also been collected in the anthology "Brushes with the Supernatural."