. . . I was at school, counseling a single mom on ways she and her daughter could make better use of their time and sadly, their somewhat limited talents. At 4:00 p.m., the school secretary yoo-hooed down the hall to tell me I had a phone call. I excused myself (getting tired of talking to the mom anyway, she had been there for and hour and a half), and took the call.
And in that instant, my life changed forever.
It was a caseworker from our local children's services agency. There was a 4 day old baby at a local hospital, did we want him or not.
Just like that.
I had been contemplating going through the highs and lows of foster/adoption again, but hadn't screwed up enough courage to talk to DH about it again. He had resigned himself to our family status. I told the case worker I needed to talk to DH first and would call her back. "How long will that take?" said she. "He's at work and I'm at work," says I, "I'll call you back as soon as I can."
I told the Mom something had come up, here's your hat what's your hurry, and flew home. Of course, you can never find a ranger when you want one, and that night was no different. The dispatcher located him for me and passed along the message to come to the 223. (That's 10-code talk for home.) He arrived just moments before the caseworker called again. She was pretty aggravated sounding, which didn't calm my nerves at all.
"When do they want the baby to come here?" says I.
"Tonight," says she. "The hospital says he's healthy and they don't have room for him." (Here read: they didn't want to foot the bill any more.)
By now it's nearly 7 p.m., and there was no way in hell we could put up a tiny newborn that night. We asked if we could get him the next night, after school. She hangs up. She calls back. Says she, "The hospital says they can keep him one more night. We'll bring him to your house tomorrow at 3. See you then." Click.
Holy cow. Now what do we do?
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