"Angela, we can't do this!" My husband started to shout at me,
"You said you wanted a child," I said to him calmly, "And the opportunity just knocked on the door, it would be stupid not to take it!"
"Please," Deidre pleaded with him, "I want what's best for Dana, and that's not me."
My husband tried to argue, but I had already started off to our bedroom to get my purse.
"Here, here's three thousand dollars." I said, handing Deidre wad of bills, "Take it."
She grabbed the money and handed the child over to me before quickly going and shutting the door quietly behind her.
"Oh Angela, what have you done?" My husband said worriedly.
The next day, I went about my business, I made my husband breakfast, I bought the groceries, I ran my errands. This day was different from the last few though, I was… happier, like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I felt fulfilled. Dana was enjoying being carried around as I bought baby some new baby things. I had had a miscarriage some years ago and still had a lot of baby things at the house, but none of the clothing was his size.
I made dinner for my husband and my new child, it seemed a little awkward to suddenly have a ten month old baby after having no baby the day before, but I was quit happy to adjust, to become the housewife I had longed to be.
I worked late shifts at the rehab clinic with a young woman named Felicia Tillman, just a few days before she had been showing off a calendar of a place called Fairview where her sister Martha lived, it looked idyllic, the sort of neighbourhood I wanted to raise Dana in. Felicia and I had never really gotten along, but we carpooled because she lived only just down the road from me. I chose to keep Dana a secret from them all because I didn't want the police to be involved if they found out who his real mother was. Turns out she was just down the hall from me.
The rehab clinic was part of a hospital, and there were nurses and doctors rushing in all directions when I had finally scrubbed up.
Deidre was on a trolley bed being wheeled along the corridor, unconscious, probably from a drug overdose.
"She had a ten month old baby!" Felicia said, "She wouldn't just leave it in the middle of the floor in a crack house!"
"There was no baby with her when we found her ma'am" A police officer responded
"I will have you de-badged if anything happens to that baby." She threatened the officer
"We'll wait for her to wake up and we'll ask her where she left her baby." The officer responded.
It was at that point that I realised we had to leave. That I had to take my family away from here, to give Dana a chance at a life, and to give me the chance to be his mother.