On a late-summer afternoon in September 2017, a Signal Mountain couple, Charlie and Brittany Dolan, were given just two hours to make a life-changing decision.
It came down to this: Did the Dolans want one newborn baby in their lives, or two?
At the time, Brittany, a graphic artist, was seven months pregnant with the couple's first child, a boy. She and her husband were living with her parents on Signal Mountain while they built a house nearby.
Out of the blue, the opportunity arose for Brittany and Charlie, a TVA worker, to perhaps parent a newborn girl who had just been put up for emergency adoption at Erlanger hospital.
Brittany, now 27, said the improbable, but ultimately wonderful, day was put in motion when she got a phone call from her husband.
Mark Kennedy"How crazy do you want life to be?" Charlie, now 36, asked his wife.
"I don't know, it seems pretty crazy already," Brittany said.
Well, it was about to get super crazy.
Charlie explained that he had learned from a local attorney that a baby girl had just been born at Erlanger, and that the biological parents were looking for an adoptive family. The Dolans had briefly explored adoption before becoming pregnant.
The Dolans had until 4 p.m. that day to submit a "profile" of themselves for the biological parents if they wished to be considered.
The profile, in turn, would be added to a stack of meticulously designed, hardback profiles from other couples. The odds against this working out for the Dolans were long, and time was short.
In a coincidence that now seems providential, Brittany's skills as a graphic artist made her uniquely qualified to pull together a profile - a package of photos and text - in essentially the time it takes to watch a feature-length movie.
But first, there was a decision to make. The couple had already endured two miscarriages, so the idea of now having two babies almost simultaneously seemed surreal.
"At first we both said, 'I don't think we can do this,'" Charlie remembers. "And then we said, 'If we are willing to pass up the first baby presented to us, maybe we don't have as big a heart for adoption as we thought.'"
Brittany agreed, and the die was cast.
She raced to put together a profile that told the story of a young couple on the cusp of parenthood who were building a house on a five-acre lot on the back of Signal Mountain. It highlighted their big extended families, love of animals (specifically dogs) and church involvement.
Still, the Dolans said, it felt like such a long shot that it was almost folly to even try.
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Later that day, though, the Dolans got a call from the attorney. They were one of two couples who had been chosen by the birth parents of the baby girl for a face-to-face meeting. They immediately packed up and rushed to Erlanger. Since they didn't have any time to rehearse their story, all their answers in the interview came from the heart.
Several hours later, they were back on the porch at Brittany's parents' house, talking about the day's whirlwind events, when the phone rang again. It was the lawyer.
"He said, "If you are willing, they'd like you to adopt their child," Charlie remembers. "We had until the next day to give them an answer."
The Dolans didn't need to sleep on their decision, they knew.
The next day, they returned to the hospital. They sat waiting in a room for the 2-day-old little girl who would become Eleanor "Nora" Dolan.
"They rolled her in and said, 'Here you go Mom and Dad,'" Charlie recalls.
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It's now over a year and a half later, and Nora is a charming little girl with mesmerizing eyes. Her little brother, Charlie Dolan IV, is a 17-month-old ball of energy with a mischievous smile.
Little Charlie was born on schedule in November 2017, about two months behind his sister. The odd math of being the parents of a 19-month-old girl and a 17-month-old boy is still a conversation starter for the Dolans.
But they have long since normalized the emotions of their unconventional path to parenting.
"He [little Charlie] is a sweet one, but he's definitely all boy," said Dad, struggling to keep his son on his lap.
"I cannot imagine my life without this little girl," said Mom, with Nora on her knee. "We are so lucky to be able to raise her."
Sometimes life just happens the way it happens, and everything works out for the best.
It's enough to make you consider there might have been a divine plan.
To suggest a human interest story, contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.