The Christmas Hope(6)

“I may be beefy but beefy’s good,” Roy said. “Beefy’s not heavy.”

I turned my back to him and pressed the phone closer to my ear. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll take care of her.” I hung up the phone. “Bridget Sloane was taken to County a few minutes ago,” I said, pulling a file from my cabinet.

“What for?”

“Selling to an undercover cop. I have to place Mia.” I shook my head, shoving files into my briefcase. “She left Mia in her crib at seven o’clock last night and never went back home.” Roy looked down at his watch. “Fifteen and a half hours,” I said, helping him do the math. “The police are at the apartment now.” Bridget Sloane was eighteen years old and the mother of a beautiful ten-month-old daughter who was an albatross around Bridget’s neck. Bridget had been on the move since she ran away from home at sixteen. If she had any idea who the father was she would have fought him for child support so she could use the money for drugs. But she didn’t even know she was pregnant until she was three months along and by then she couldn’t remember where she had been, who she had lived with, or what she had smoked. We had placed Mia in a foster home for three months when she was born so Bridget could finish a jail term for bad checks. I called that foster family again to see if they were available to take Mia this time. The message on their machine said they were out of town. I called Sandra and Guy Michaels, a new family I had worked with and liked.

“Bring her anytime,” Sandra said. I hung up the phone and grabbed my purse. “You up for tagging along?” I asked Roy. He took his jacket off the coat rack and followed me to the elevator.





We entered Bridget’s apartment and found a police officer bouncing Mia up and down. She was screaming. It was cold inside the tiny three-room apartment. “We’re with DFS,” I said to the officer. Reaching for Mia, I gave the officer my business card. “Doesn’t the electricity work?” I asked.

“Nothing works,” the officer said. “Guess the electric company turned it off.”

I wrapped Mia’s blanket around her and held her close. Her hands were freezing.

“She’s been screaming since we got here,” he said. “She’s screamed so much that she threw up. We couldn’t find any diapers so I made one out of paper towels.”

I put my hand on Mia’s bottom and felt the massive “diaper” the officer had created.

“Shh, shh, shh,” I whispered into Mia’s ear. “It’s okay, Mia. It’s okay.” She straightened her legs and screamed louder. I rummaged through the kitchen cabinets looking for formula.

“There’s nothing here,” the officer told me. “We’ve already looked.”

“I’ll pack her clothes,” Roy said, walking toward Mia’s bedroom.

The officer handed him a plastic grocery bag filled with clothes. “I knew you’d want them. They were the only clothes I could find.”

Roy took them and looked in Mia’s room at the mess that was in the portable crib. I walked behind him holding Mia.

“Looks like Bridget ran out of diapers a few days ago,” Roy said. I shook my head and tried to quiet Mia’s screams. She was starving and I had to find her something to eat. I headed for the door.

“What will happen to her?” the officer asked.

“She’ll go into a foster home,” I said.

“Will her mother get her back?”

“I don’t know.”

“No baby should ever have to go through what she did.”

“I know,” I said, bouncing Mia. Roy opened the door and we walked down the hallway.

A woman stuck her head out of her apartment door. “Ma’am,” she said. “Ma’am!”

I turned around and saw her coming toward me holding a bottle. “I heard the police talking to you.” She handed me the bottle. “It’s not formula but it’s warm milk. Maybe it will help.”

“Thank you,” I said. “You wouldn’t happen to have a diaper, would you?” She ran back into her apartment and carried out a handful.

“They’ll be too big but they’ll still work.” She disappeared into her apartment and we could hear her bolt the door behind her. I handed the diapers to Roy and put the nipple of the bottle into Mia’s mouth. She continued to scream and I ran the nipple over her lips and the inside of her mouth.

“Here you go, Mia,” I said. “Here you go, sweet girl.” She closed her lips around the nipple and began to suck. I wiped the tears off her face and kissed the top of her head, pulling her closer to me so she’d feel safe. “How about we get in the car and find you something to eat, huh?” Roy opened the rear car door and I laid Mia on the backseat of the car and pulled off the paper towel diaper. “Totally dry,” I said to Roy. After fifteen and a half hours of being alone I was sure Mia was on her way to dehydration. I fastened a diaper on her, strapped her into the car seat, and started to cover her legs with her blanket but stopped. I smelled it and set it aside. It reeked of cigarette smoke. “Would you get the blanket out of the trunk?” I asked Roy. He popped the trunk and handed it to me. I tucked it around Mia, propping the bottle on it so she could continue to drink. “Food’s coming up,” I said, noticing the bottle was all but empty at this point. I knew as soon as it ran out that she’d be screaming again. I sat in the backseat with Mia as Roy drove to a small nearby diner.