I glare at Dr. Grey at Nathan helps me back into the bed. I felt bad we had to drag Abigail to the hospital with us and the four kids, but she didn't seem to mind. She stays close to Raylen, and I think they're cute.

"You can't just get up and leave. Do you know what could have happened if you didn't pull out the IV in time?"

I push Nathan's hand off of me and sit down on the edge of the bed.

"But I pulled it out in time. Do you know how much money I have? I could sue you for holding me hostage. I'm fairly certain I can leave the hospital against medical advice. I am related to a lawyer, you know."

Dr. Grey runs his hands up and down his face.

"I have been treating you for a month, but your lack of respect never ceases to surprise me."

"Connard." I mutter under my breath. I look at him. "I want to go home."

"I know." Dr. Grey says, and he looks sympathetic. "And I'm sorry this happened to you." He plops down in the wheelchair I was in, rubbing his temples. "But you can't leave, Mrs. Reed. You can't walk and you can't use your right arm at all. You can't even go to the bathroom without help."

"I have my husband to help me."

"Your husband can't be by your side every second. You have four kids. What if he's making dinner and you fall? Do you really want your children to see you like that?"

I sigh slowly.

"No." I whisper.

"You can leave when you can walk." He says.

"When is that?"

He gives me a sympathetic look.

"Another two to four weeks."

"Two to four weeks?" I snarl. "Are you kidding me! That's ridiculous! No. I'm going home. Go retrieve the paperwork."

"If you leave, you could mess up your leg or your arm even more than it already is. You could never walk again, never use your right arm again, that means no writing since you're left handed, no walking, spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair, no horses, and-and you ride a motorcycle too, right? You can't do that either."

"That's if I don't fall." I snap. "I will be fine. Get the paperwork.'

He sighs, dejected, and turns to walk out.

"Dr. Grey," Nathan shoots him a polite smile. "That paperwork won't be necessary. My wife is staying until you say otherwise."

"No I'm not." I snort. "Get the paperwork."

"Don't get the paperwork." Nathan says. He turns to me, his eyes hard as he grabs my legs and forces me into the bed. I squirm away from him.

"Wait!" I plead, looking out from behind Nathan, my chin pressed against his right bicep. "What about a nurse? Don't they have at home care?"

"Can you guys give me a moment alone with Mama?" Nathan glances at the kids. The five of them walk out, and Dr. Grey follows, shutting the door.

"You're being unfair." I snap at Nathan as he manhandles me into the bed. He rakes his fingers through his hair.

"You're being an idiot." He snaps back at me. My eyebrows raise.

"Do not call-"

"You could live in a wheelchair forever. I was trapped in the hospital for three months and I was miserable. I was alone. You have me and the kids. You have the rest of the family. You could never use your arm again, or your leg. You will be disabled, in a wheelchair, unable to drive. You have a month left, Odeletta, and then you will be walking again. They aren't holding you hostage, they're trying to help you get your shit together. You pulled Raylen out of school and called him an Uber and made him sneak you out of a hospital! He broke into a supply closet! Another month of suffering through this will be worth it when you could spend decades disabled. Do you want to be disabled longer than you have been alive?"

No, I don't. I sight slowly, falling back in bed.

"No." I grumble.

"I know how hard it is, believe me, I know. Imagine being unable to breathe without help, having a seizure in front of your two babies? Having a ton of wires attached to you. I know you're restless, but you need to suck it up."

"Okay." I whisper. "I'll do it."

"Promise?" He asks.

"I promise."

He leans down and kisses me gently, sighing against my lips.

"I love you, mon amour."

"I love you too, beau."

_____

I stare at the floor of the café, thankful the doctors are at least letting me out of the hospital room. After my stunt of slipping from the hospital unnoticed, Dr. Grey told the nurses to let me out if I asked. With it now being December 10th, I look around the hospital cafeteria, watching people do what they do.

It's been about two weeks since I met Abigail. Noemie's birthday was December first and Raylen's was December eighth. She's fifteen now, and Raylen is seventeen.

Noah turned twelve in September and Caroline turned ten in October, so I don't have to worry about them getting older for another year. Nathan is out taking the kids to school right now, it's only eight thirty or so, and the sky is slightly dark from the heavy clouds. Even sitting inside, I can feel the cold air seeping through the window from poor insulation. I hear an obnoxious sound of somebody sucking the life out of an empty drink with a straw.

I turn my head and see a little girl who looks to be about six or so. She's staring at a piece of paper with a pencil in her left hand the pencil looks so bing in her small hands. She has a hospital gown on, and her legs are crossed, revealing her pink princess panties to everyone around her. She has the same light blonde hair that my daughter has, but this little girl as a slight wave to hers. Her eyes are blue, like the ocean.

I look around for her parents, frowning.

Why is a child this young sitting in a hospital gown in a bustling cafeteria alone? I haven't seen her before.

She looks up when a women drops a tray of food, her blue eyes flitting around anxiously. I notice a cast on her right arm. She has bruises around her neck like she was choked, a bruise on her cheek, stitches on her other cheek and her forehead, and a split lip.

My heart clenches. Did somebody beat this little girl?

I use my left hand to scoot across the booth. The hospital wall is lined with a booth that has tables against it. She's sitting two tables away from me in the booth. The window is behind me. I scoot to the table next to her, close enough to talk to her but not close enough to startle her. I prop my casted leg up on the chair across from me.

I take a peek at what she's writing and I see her sigh, a loose tendril of blonde hair puffing out in front of her.

I see numbers written all over the page. She must be doing math homework.

I look around again.

Why is she here alone?

I notice a temporary tattoo on the back of her right hand. It's ofSanta Claus.

"Are you excited for Christmas?" I ask her quietly. She jumps, her head snapping to the right to look at me. Her blue eyes widen in fear and she scoots away from me a little.

"Yes." She whispers. She's missing a tooth on the bottom.

"Did you make your list yet?" I ask. She swallows, and cautiously shakes her head.

"No, I don't get presents."

Is she Jewish?

"Well why not?"

She frowns, looking down at her paper.

"I just don't."

I nod my head slowly.

"Okay then, what's your name? I'm Odeletta. You can call me Odette."

She looks at me, her eyes studying my face.

"I like Odeletta." She says softly, running her thumb against the wood of the pencil in her hand. "I'm Lucy."

"Where's your Mama, Lucy?"

She looks away from me.

"I don't have a Mama."

"Where's your Daddy?"

"I don't have one of those either." She frowns deeply, and then her lips starts bleeding again. She reaches up and wipes the blood off with the back of her hand.

She's an orphan?

I decide not to question her. She's just a baby, after all.

"What are you writing?" I ask.

She looks at the paper.

"It's my math." She says. "But I don't get it."

"I am good at math. Do you want some help?"

She looks at me.

"Nobody has ever helped me before, Odeletta."

I smile softly.

"I will help you, Lucy. If you want."

She frowns, her eyes narrowing slightly.

"Does that mean somebody owns you?" She points to the rings with the eraser of her pencil.

I smile.

"No, that means that I am married."

"To a boy?" She asks.

"Yes."

"Did he hurt you?" She points to the sling on my arm and the cast on my leg. My eyes widen.

"No sweetie, my husband doesn't hurt me. He loves me."

She frowns.

"Do you have kids?" She asks.

"I have four." I say. "Two girls and two boys."

"What are their names?"

"Well my youngest is Caroline and she is ten." I say. "And then there's Noah, and he's twelve, and then Neomie, and she's fifteen, and then Raylen, and he's seventeen."

She looks down at her paper again.

"Do you help them with their homework?" She whispers.

"Yes." I nod my head.

"Do you hurt them the way my foster Mama did to me?"

Her foster mother did this to her?

"No baby, I do not hurt them." I whisper.

"You promise you won't hurt me?"

"I promise." I nod.

Her hands are shaking as she grabs her folder and scoots closer to me, leaving the empty juice box on the table. I scoot over to the right side of the table instead of the left, propping my leg back up. She sets her paper on the table, making sure she doesn't touch me.

"I am stuck on the whole thing." She peers at me with her beautiful blue eyes.

I nod my head once and look down at the page.

It's only five questions.

1.

If you have two quarters, and somebody else gives you two quarters, how much money do you have?

God, I remember helping my kids do these problems.

"Okay." I nod slowly. "Do you know how many cents are in one dollar?" I ask. She looks up at me again and nods slowly.

"One hundred pennies." She whispers.

"Right." I say. "So a quarter is twenty five cents, right?"

"Yes." She says.

"And what does two quarters make?"

"Fifty cents."

"Do you know how it makes fifty cents?"

She frowns.

"Twenty five plus twenty five is fifty...right?"

"Right darling, right, so if you have two quarters that equeal fifty cents, and somebody else give you two quarters, how much money do you have?"

Her eyebrows knit together

"Well if you have fifty cents and then another fifty cents, you have a hundred."

"And why is that?"

"Because five plus five is ten and you can't add zero."

What?

"What do you mean?" I ask. She picks up her pencil and writes; 50+50 on top of each other, and then she does five plus five and carries the zero.

"See Odeletta? One hundred."

"And how much money is is one hundred cents?" I ask.

"A dollar." She says.

"Right, so now you can answer number one." I tap the page.

She reads it slowly, out loud, sounding out words she struggles with, and then she picks up the pencil with her left hand and writes in long letters 100 cents=1 dollar

"Right?" She looks up at me.

I nod my head and start on question two.

_____

Lucy comes bounding over to me an hour later with two chocolate ice creams in her hand. She plops down next to me and slides me one of them.

"Thank you for buying me ice cream." She smiles up at me.

"You are very welcome sweetheart. You did good on your math." I say. She drops my coins in my hand. I shove them back into my wallet and take the second spoon from her outstretched hand, watching as she messily fills her mouth with ice cream.

"I've never had ice cream before." She says. "It's good!"

She's never had ice cream?

She's already warmed up to me a lot. I helped her do all her homework and then I gave her a ten dollar bill and told her she could go get whatever she wanted. She's the cutest little girl and she's so smart.

"Can I ask you something Lucy?" I ask. She looks up at me. "Do you remember your parents?"

She sticks a spoonful of ice cream in her mouth and shakes her head.

"Mama and Daddy left me in a dumpster in New York City." She shrugs. "I got sent around a lot and then my foster Mama took me in. But Tuesday night I spilt the milk, and she got mad at me. My doctor said I'm not allowed to go back there."

"Do you are..." I search to find the right word.

"I'm an orphan." She says. "Nobody wants to adopt me though because I like coloring instead of playing with dolls. Now I'm getting too old. People only want babies." She shrugs. "My foster sister, she's fifteen, and she takes care of me. She called 911 when I wouldn't wake up on the kitchen floor."

I ignore the pain in my heart as I watch her lick her upper lip.

"So where are you going to go?"

"Probably another foster home."

"For how long?" I ask harshly. How could somebody treat a child this way?

She jumps and her eyes fill with fear.

"I'm sorry, sweetie, I did not mean to be mean." I say gently, reaching out to her. She winces, but her expression calms when she realizes I'm only tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

"I will stay there until I turn into a grownup, and then on my birthday I move out." She explains quietly. "Unless somebody adopts me!" Her eyes light up with hope. "I want a Mama and Daddy to love so bad! And a big sister! And a big brother to protect me from bullies! I want a Mama and Daddy who will let me draw." She looks down. "But I might not ever get one."

I reach out and gently wipe a dot of chocolate ice cream from her cheek, careful of her bruise.

"I'm sure you will." I say softly.

A thousand questions are whirring through my mind.

How could somebody leave a newborn in a box like that? How could somebody beat a child like that? How is it legal to send a kid around from home to home, making them feel like a burden? She's supposed to just live like that forever?

I hear a chair scrape out across from Lucy and her whole body stiffens. She moves clover to me, pressing herself into my side. I look up and lock eyes with familiar brown ones.

"Who's this?" Nathan asks.

"Nathan, this is Lucy. Lucy, this is my husband Nathan. You can trust him."

Nathan's eyes linger on her beaten face and I see his eyebrows furrow. He looks at me and I just shake my head at him.

"Hi." Lucy whispers shyly.

Nathan hasn't sat down yet, but he moves and crouches as close to her as she can get.

"Hello Lucy. Do you want to go get some juice?" Nathan asks her.

She grins at him, nodding her head, and then she looks at me.

"Are you sure we can trust him?"

"I am sure." I smile. Nathan reaches out and scoops her into my arms, and I hear her telling him how nobody has ever offered to buy her juice before. Their voices disappear as he carries her over to the juice station.

I want to adopt that little girl so badly.

I sigh and snack on my ice cream. By the time I finish, they walk back over. Nathan sets her down gently and she sucks on her apple juice, her eyes flitting around the café. I watch at Nathan talks with her about ice cream and I can see the way he looks at her.

He looks at her the way he looks at our children.