Sarah M. Anderson - His Forever Family

“Oh, my God,” she whispered as the baby’s back arched and it let out a squeal. His little body was like a furnace in her hands.

“What do we do?” Marcus asked. He was clearly panicking.

And Liberty couldn’t blame him. “Water,” she realized. “He’s too hot.”

Marcus held out her water bottle, the one he’d been filling. She grabbed the rag and said, “Soak that in the fountain,” and took her bottle.

The baby squirmed mightily in her arms and she had this moment that was almost an out-of-body thing, where instead of looking down at a little baby boy she’d just plucked from a shoe box, she was looking down at William, the baby brother she’d never gotten the chance to see, much less hold. Was this what he’d been like, after their mother gave birth in prison and the baby was taken away to a foster home? Had William died like this?

No. This baby, whoever he was, was not going to die. Not if she had anything to do with it.

“This is disgusting,” Marcus said, but she didn’t pay any attention to him.

She folded herself into a cross-legged position on the gravel, ignoring the way the rocks dug into her skin. “It’s okay,” she soothed as she tried to dribble some water into the baby’s mouth. “You’re a good boy, aren’t you? Oh, you’re such a sweetheart.” The baby turned his head from side to side and wailed piteously. Panic gripped her. What if he wasn’t going to make it? What if she couldn’t save him? “You’re loved,” she told him, tears coming to her eyes. “And you’re so strong. You can do this, okay?”

“Here,” Marcus said, thrusting the rag at her. Except it wasn’t the rag—it was his shirt.

She looked up and found herself staring right at Marcus Warren’s bare chest. In any other circumstances she would have taken her time admiring the view because damn. He was muscled and cut—but still lean. He had a true runner’s body.

The baby whimpered. Right. She had much more important things to deal with than her boss suddenly half-naked. She held the baby away from her body. “Drape it over him.”

Marcus did as he was told, laying the sopping-wet cloth over the baby’s body. The sudden temperature change made the poor thing howl. “It’s okay,” she murmured to him, trying to get a little water into his mouth. “You’ll feel better soon.”

“Should I go for help? What should we do?”

Help. That would be a good thing. “My phone is in my pack,” she said. He didn’t run with his phone—that was her job. “Call 911.” She was amazed at how calm she sounded, as if finding a baby on the verge of heatstroke in the trash was just another Tuesday in her life.

Marcus crouched behind her and dug through the fanny pack that held her water, keys and phone. “Got it.” She told him her password without a second thought and he dialed. “We’re at Buckingham Fountain and we found a baby in the trash,” Marcus said way too loudly into the phone.

“Shh, shh,” Liberty soothed as Marcus talked to the 911 dispatcher. “Here, let’s try this.” She dipped her finger into the water and held it against the baby’s mouth. He sucked at it eagerly and made a little protest when she pulled her finger away to dip it into the water again.

He latched on to her finger a second time—which had the side benefit of cutting off the crying. Liberty took a deep breath and tried to think. There’d been a baby at her second foster home. How had the foster mother calmed that baby down?

Oh, yes. She remembered now. She began to rock back and forth, the gravel cutting into her legs. “That’s a good boy,” she said, her ears straining for the sounds of sirens. “You’re loved. You can do it.”

Agonizingly long minutes passed. She couldn’t get the baby to take much more water, but he sucked on the tip of her finger fiercely. As she rocked and soothed him, his body relaxed and he curled up against her side. Liberty held him even tighter.

“Is he okay?” Marcus demanded.

She looked up at him, trying not to stare at his body. Never in the three years she’d worked for Marcus had she seen him even half this panicked. “I think he fell asleep. The poor thing. He can’t be more than a few days old.”

“How could anyone just leave him?” Now, that was more like the Marcus she knew—frustrated when the world did not conform to his standards.

“You’d be surprised,” she mumbled, dropping her gaze back to the baby, who was still ferociously tugging on her finger in his sleep. Aside from being hot and filthy, he looked healthy. Of course, she’d never seen William before he died in foster care, so she didn’t know what a drug-addicted newborn looked like. This child’s head was round and his eyes were still swollen; she’d seen pictures of newborns who looked like him. She just couldn’t tell.

“You’re just about perfect, you know?” she told the infant. Then she said to Marcus, “Here, wet your shirt again. I think he’s cooling down.”

Marcus did as he was told. “You’re doing an amazing job,” he said as she wrapped the wet cloth around the baby’s body. The baby started at the temperature change, but didn’t let go of her finger. Marcus went on, “I didn’t know you knew so much about babies,” and she didn’t miss the awe in his voice.

There’s a lot you don’t know about me. But she didn’t say it because it’d been less than—what, twenty minutes? If that. It’d been less than twenty minutes since Marcus Warren had said he trusted her because she was the one person who was honest with him.

She wasn’t—honest with him, that was. But that didn’t mean she wanted to lie outright to him. She hated lying at all but she did what she had to do to survive.

So, instead, she said, “Must be the mothering instinct.” What else could it be? Here was a baby who needed her in a truly primal way and Liberty had responded.

The baby sighed in what she hoped was contentment and she felt her heart clinch. “Such a good boy,” she said, leaning down to kiss his little forehead.

Sirens came screaming toward them. Then the paramedics were upon them and everything happened fast. The baby was plucked from her arms and carried into the ambulance, where he wailed even louder. It tore her up to hear him cry like that.

At the same time, a police officer arrived and took statements from her and Marcus. Liberty found herself half listening to the questions as she stood at the back of the open ambulance while the medics dug out a pacifier and wrapped the baby in a clean blanket.

“Is he going to be okay?” she asked when one of the paramedics hopped out of the back and started to close the door.

“Hard to say,” the man said.

“Where are you taking him?”

“Northwestern is closest.”

Marcus broke off talking with the cop to say, “Take him to Children’s.” At some point, he’d put his shirt back on. It looked far worse for wear.

The paramedic shrugged and closed the doors, cutting Liberty off from the baby. The ambulance drove off—lights flashing but no sirens blaring.

The cop finished taking their statements. Liberty asked, “Will you be able to find the mother?”

Much like the paramedic, the cop shrugged. She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, she’d barely survived childhood because, aside from Grandma Devlin, people couldn’t be bothered to check on little Liberty Reese. “It’s a crime to abandon a baby,” he said. “If the mother had left the baby at a police station, that’s one thing. But...” He shrugged again. “Don’t know if we’ll find her, though. Usually babies are dumped close to where they’re born, and someone in the neighborhood knows something. But the middle of the park?” He turned, as if the conversation was over.