He said: we have experience.
He said: we have a house that knows what children are.
He said: some child is going to need a safe place tonight somewhere.
He said: I want that place to be us.
I looked at the paperwork.
I thought about the drawer.
I said: all right.
We filled out the paperwork.
We submitted it.
We completed the training.
We completed the background checks and the home study and the specific requirements of the emergency foster care process.
And then we waited.
Not impatiently.
Just waited.
Six months.
Nothing came through.
And then on a Tuesday night in November, Michael told me a coworker had been taken to the hospital and he needed to go.
He said it quickly, in the way he said things when he was moving fast.
He put on his jacket.
He went.
At 2:06 in the morning, his name appeared on my phone screen.
I was awake.
I was a light sleeper and I had been aware that he had not come home and had been doing the specific half-awake monitoring of someone who is waiting without exactly waiting.
I answered.
