Tag: child abuse

Paula Lyons

The police had been called to the house by a neighbor who said she heard children crying and hadn’t seen the mother in two days. It was the middle of a night in July, and the children’s wails would have traveled through the project windows left open to catch cooling breezes.

Paramedics provided transport to the hospital, but the normally cynical and well-defended police were so outraged that they also came to the ER, where I was the resident on call.

The police came to find and punish those who had neglected this waif, but I also sensed that, despite their tough exteriors, they came also to vent their impotent rage and to seek reassurance that this tiny, dirty, appealing thing