In the weeks that followed, the hospital hummed with the sound of recovery, but a new threat emerged in the form of tidy offices and cold statistics. Denise Kline, a coordinator who saw the world in terms of “placements” and “logic,” argued that the siblings should be separated, suggesting that the bond between a traumatized girl and a fragile infant was too complicated to maintain.
But Cecilia Hart, a foster mother with a quiet strength, saw what the system chose to ignore. She saw the way Maisie walked back to the hospital in the middle of the night just to press her hand against the glass of the neonatal unit, because to Maisie, the baby wasn’t a “case file”—he was her entire world.
When the day of the hearing arrived, the courtroom was silent as Maisie stood in a chair that made her look even smaller than she was.
“I walked all that way,” she told the judge, her voice steadying as the truth of her love filled the room. “I kept him warm when the house was cold. I’m the one who knows how he likes to be held. Please don’t make me be alone again.”