Thanks to everyone who read and to MelsieR, haikwoshevo, and a guest for reviewing.
"Alex Freeman," the man on the other end of the phone greeted, and Sonja heaved a mental sigh of relief. She didn't have time for phone tag today. Well, she never had time for phone tag, but somehow that never seemed to matter.
"Hello, this is Sonja Travers, Jamie's social worker," she greeted. "Do you have a few minutes to talk?"
"Of course, he said that you were probably going to call."
"He did?" she asked in surprise. In her experience Jamie generally went out of his way to avoid talking to his foster fathers. Then again, there was a fair amount that surprised her about Jamie's current living situation.
"Yes." There was the sound of shifting around on the other end of the phone, and then, "Sorry, I'm in the middle of cleaning up my office and I needed to move a few things out of the way so I could sit down. From what he said, he might be staying with me through February?"
"If that's all right with you," she agreed. "It would make things much easier."
"That's fine. As I've told him, I've got the space, and I don't mind having him around."
And even more than that he had a clean background check and Jamie seemed to trust him, and she couldn't help but wonder if he might be willing to keep Jamie beyond the next two months. Granted that Jamie had only been with him a little over one month at this point, well within what social workers referred to as the honeymoon period behavior-wise, but Jamie knew the score as well as she did. And he wasn't known for being overly cooperative when he didn't like a situation regardless of the timing. The fact that he'd accepted being grounded and assigned a book report, whatever that was about, for doing something he shouldn't have rather than just blowing the whole thing off was damn near a miracle as far as she was concerned. "He did say that he'd gotten into a little bit of trouble recently," she said after a moment. No sense in springing something like that on the man right off the bat and possibly scaring him off. "I know what he said, but do you mind if I ask you what happened?"
"He stayed out all night and scared the hell out of me," Dr. Freeman said immediately. "But we've got that sorted now, I think, although I still need to remember to get him some emergency money. The smoking, however, is going to stop." There was no give in his tone at that, and it was followed by a moment of silence before, "I…"
"Dr. Freeman?" she prompted when he trailed off. "Is something wrong?"
"Alex, please. And I don't know how much you can legally tell me so I'm not quite sure what to ask, but Jamie panicked after it all happened. This past weekend, I mean." Another pause. "I'm sure the nightmare didn't help, and I'm well aware that he doesn't like being touched. He's flinched away from me before."
That wasn't good news from Sonja's perspective, but he kept speaking before she could say anything.
"But we've covered that he doesn't have to let anyone touch him, me included, if it's not something like a medical necessity, and I thought we'd covered that no one was allowed to hurt him, either. Until this weekend when he basically said outright that he expected me to take a belt to him. Given that I've never raised a hand to him, that makes me think that the abuse was severe."
He was, unfortunately, entirely correct, but equally unfortunately she couldn't discuss it with a person who wasn't actually Jamie's foster parent. Although he wasn't asking for confirmation of the abuse—not really a surprise given what he'd just described—so... "You're right that I can't answer with any specifics, but I feel comfortable saying that Jamie does not normally deal well with men. To the point where I would never have considered placing him in a household with a single man because I'd have expected him to run away the first night." Not that he always lasted much longer than that in two-parent households, but it was men who triggered most of his fears.
"I'm sure he would have liked to do just that back at Thanksgiving, but the snowstorm made it impossible," Alex said after a moment. "And he already knew me, which might have helped a little." A sigh. "I don't think this past weekend would have been so bad if he hadn't already been exhausted; we've butted heads before and he's never reacted like that no matter how much I yelled. But he did, and I didn't like seeing it. Or not knowing what to do."
"Well, I wasn't there and didn't talk to him much about what happened beyond asking what he'd done to get grounded so I can't speak to that, but I can say that he seemed to be back to his normal self and perfectly happy with his living situation by the time I spoke to him on Monday. Unfortunately a lot of kids in the system have backgrounds that are less than ideal, and sometimes the best you can do is take things one day at a time. With teenagers it tends to be even harder because they do not like to open up and occasionally do things that even they know are not in their best interest." It was practically a hallmark of teenage behavior, unfortunately, and when you were talking about foster parents who hadn't raised a child since infancy their ability to cope...varied.
"Jamie's a good kid," Alex said. "Even if he needs to be reminded about that sometimes. Could I ask what this foster parent class that he mentioned is?"
"It's actually a set of classes, an orientation program that we hold for new foster parents every few months. It runs for eight weeks at a time, and we give a broad overview of how the system works and how children get into the system, what kind of issues they might see in the kids they foster, avenues for assistance, basic first aid training...basically a range of things that all new foster parents need to know. And probably most importantly we get our new foster parents set up with a support group among their peers and try to match them to a mentor who's had several years of foster care experience."
"And people just…get kids after that?"
It was Sonja's turn to pause. "It's not the greatest system in the world, but it's what we've got. Is there any chance that you might be interested in taking the class? Keeping Jamie longer term?" She'd hoped to find out if he had any leanings in that direction, maybe give him a nudge if he hadn't thought about it, but given how less-than-thrilled he sounded about how children were assigned homes there was no reason not to ask outright.
"I'm not any kind of parent," Alex said immediately. "That was no joke when he panicked the other day, and even if it was mostly exhaustion it took pointing out that I wouldn't even be capable of hurting him if he decided to fight back to snap him anywhere near out of it."
"No one is instantly a good parent," Sonja said, just as quickly. She'd reassured plenty of foster parents about that over the years. "Given Jamie's history, the fact that he did calm down says a lot about you. The classes aren't a lot, a couple hours every Thursday evening for eight weeks." Which probably didn't say great things about the foster care system in and of itself, but again, it was what they had.
"The scheduling shouldn't be a problem unless I have a hospital shift," he said after a moment, "but to be clear, I'm not interested in any other kids besides Jamie."
"I understand that. You wouldn't be the first person to become a foster parent for a specific child." Most of the time when that happened it was for a relative, but not always. "And you don't have to decide now. You could always take the classes, and if you change your mind later Jamie never has to know about it."
"No," Alex said. "He knows my schedule, and I'm not going to lie to him. And if he doesn't want to stay with me, I'm not going to force him." He seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then, "Put my name down. If he says no, I'll let you know."
"Wonderful, thank you. I'll email you the address and the class materials. Oh—and I will need to arrange a home visit at some point, and it would be better if you and Jamie were both there. Do you think you could make that work maybe some weekend or after school one day?"
"Sure, just let me know of a few days that might work for you and we'll find a time that we can both be there. If it's sometime in the next week or two I can pretty much guarantee that Jamie will be home after school."
"Excellent, then I'll add that to the email. And if you think of any other questions feel free to reply back with them."
"Ah—I do have one before you go, if you don't mind. What do I need to do to get Jamie in to see an optometrist?"
"What?"