Reflection

Moments before my hand touched the glass door handle, I was met with the sudden frustration towards my running nose before blowing it in my handkerchief. Winters are supposed to be warm, safe and loving. It didn't feel as such when you had a itchy, red nose. 

Staying alone inside a supermarket just seemed like looking for trouble, while the employee had assured that it would be open for another twenty or so minutes, the horror movie flashbacks running through my mind weren’t helping. Neither were the two-day ago binging of Criminal Minds episodes. Somehow that show always left me with keeping the lights on during the night while I slept, but the show was too good to not go back to. 

Opening the supermarket door seemed harder than it ought to be, and another frustrated sigh left my mouth. The door didn't take to it kindly either, and pushed me out faster than my body could handle. 

I would have glared back, or may be cursed a few strings, if my attention hadn't been caught by a moses basket lying towards the left, on the concrete pavement. 

The basket looked like it had seen better days, but the baby in it crying out was what had me frozen. 

It took a few seconds before I started looking around, but the street seemed only a little less deserted than the supermarket behind me. No one bothered to look, or may be they ignored, I wouldn't know.

The realisation screamed like a nightmare, an abandoned baby. Someone had just left their child, and not even at a hospital, but outside a supermarket building.

I moved closer until I was crouching near it, I didn't know how to handle a child, was scared too much myself with anxiety brewing facing this new and out-of-the-blue situation.

I tried quieting it down, taking the babies hand to softly rub it to give it some warmth.

Dialing the police seemed the best option, the only option, the most obvious one. But as the ring went on, I worried what would happen after. Would they give the baby proper care and attention? Would the hospital? Was a hospital needed? Should I have called an ambulance instead? What if the parent hadn't abandoned the child and was in trouble? Would the baby be adopted? Will the family be nice? Be good enough to take care of a child? 

"Hello?"

"This is the emergency service, what may we help you with?"

"I found a baby. It's abandoned. Actually I don't know if it is. I am outside the Jose supermarket at 16th lane. No one is here. I mean-"

"A team of respondents will be with you shortly, ma'am. Please, stay calm."

"Ah, yes. I will. Yes." I could hear them say something else, but it seemed distant, all I could worry about was the child. How would they cope with this? Being abandoned so casually, the blanket light and barely helping with the cold. I shrugged off my heavy scarf to tuck it around them, the baby now just sniffling softly, eyes shining with the reflection of the lights around. It stared, small hands and small mouth, blinking, and I teared up as easily as I do every other time. 

My high school psychology teacher hadn't helped much, the counselor I had been assigned later was better, but the one thing she got right about me was that I was sensitive. Too sensitive.

She had told my parents that, while I had been at home dreading with a pit in my stomach. Wondering, thinking, overthinking. My parents had just smiled, been a bit proud of me being caring and cautious and feeling too much. I don't think they took that as to meaning it would one day rain down on them too. Not by choice, but because I had been feeling suffocated.

The responders were fast enough. The sound of the car making me turn in my crouched position, the sudden ache in my knees from the position making me fall back on the ground beside the basket. 

I blinked up at the officer, nodding when they asked if I was alright and turned to check the child again. The baby was quiet now, making me panic for a moment before I realised it was falling asleep.

“Ma’am did you see anyone around when you found the child?”

“No, not on this side of the road at least. No one around near enough to make me think,” I hoped I hadn’t missed someone. It would be just cruel to know that I had.

“How long have you been here?” the women had a soft tone, and it helped with easing my anxiety. The other officer picked up the child slowly, and nodded at the former. 

They rummaged the insides of the basket, and I suddenly felt less like an adult for not checking around for a letter or anything that could help. 

“Not long, I think may be ten or fifteen minutes. I gave the scarf because the baby looked cold. I also didn’t notice anything, although I didn’t check either,” standing up made my knees ache more, but I was too embarrassed to focus too much on it. 

It must have been twenty minutes or so, because the shutter of the supermarket came closing down behind us.

The officers talked to each other, then asked me a few other questions. I don’t think I remember what they were, I was too busy thinking about the child. 

Life always seems unfair when it’s your own versus someone else’s, but what do you do when that’s a reality? A reality for women, of people of color, of people with learning disabilities because you think that’s just them being lazy and making excuses. Of people who have to go suffer through prejudice, so far so that a “casual” is sometimes added for the less extreme. Even when people are associated so much with other people, someone’s someone, that you can forget, I still wonder why it is so easy to forget anyone is someone first. 

After the officers left and I drove back home, I kept wondering and hoping for the child. I hoped it would someday realise the unimaginable existence it has just for existing, because the society is hard and stubborn to it’s ways, the child would deal with questioning self-worth before they would reach teenage years, it was only hoping that they would somehow realise that I could calm my heart down.