Hope Lives In A Child

“Honor thy father and mother”.

I was working at County yesterday when we were dispatched to a fall. The son met us in the driveway. The first words out of his mouth were “She’s paranoid schizophrenic and she’s in the back yard”. Nothing good can come of this.

We walked into the back yard. No one there.

The son called out to us “She’s in the shed!”

Okaaayyyyy….

We opened the shed. The smell smacked us in the face. Smelled like cat urine, bad enough that inhaling resulted in a scratchy throat. There’s mom, laying on the floor. Yes… They have mom living in the shed.

But wait, it gets better. She has no cat. She is running a temp of 102.1. After getting a bit more history, it hits me. She has a UTI bad enough that the smell could peel paint.

We have been running a lot of calls lately that warrant social services.

My shaken baby from southside died last week. I have grown cold to most things, but this almost killed me. The baby was living in a two story trash can. Two years old and seventeen pounds. Dehydrated, not breathing. No one cared. Happens so much in this town, It has become just another part of life.

But, with everything in this world that casts doubt on the existence of all that is good, there is always hope. On the day the shaken baby passed, my friend gave birth to her first child.

Lightning crashes.

Hope still lives.