When they told us we could finally leave, I should\u2019ve felt relieved.<\/p>\n
Instead, I felt numb. My daughter was smiling under her mask, clutching her stuffed bunny and waving to every nurse in sight, but I couldn\u2019t shake the pit in my stomach.<\/p>\n
We didn\u2019t have a home to go back to.<\/p>\n
Rent lapsed months ago while I was staying at the hospital with her, day and night, waiting through treatments and test results. Her dad was long gone. My job said they \u201cunderstood\u201d\u2014but they stopped calling two weeks ago. I knew what that meant.<\/p>\n
I tried not to show it. I kept smiling for her, brushing her hair back, letting her pick out a balloon from the gift shop even though we couldn\u2019t really afford it.<\/p>\n
Then two police officers showed up in the lobby.<\/p>\n
For a second, I panicked. I thought maybe it was about the bills, or the paperwork I didn\u2019t finish.<\/p>\n
But one of the nurses just gave me a little nod and whispered, \u201cIt\u2019s okay. They\u2019re here to help.\u201d<\/p>\n
The officers offered to carry our bags, help us to a \u201ctemporary placement.\u201d I didn\u2019t know what that meant, and I was too exhausted to ask.<\/p>\n
We walked out like any other family\u2014wheels squeaking on the hospital floor, nurses waving goodbye.<\/p>\n
But once we were outside, one of the officers leaned in close and handed me a plain white envelope.<\/p>\n
He said, \u201cDon\u2019t open it until you\u2019re in the van.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When they told us we could finally leave, I should\u2019ve felt relieved. Instead, I felt numb. My daughter was smiling under her mask, clutching her stuffed bunny and waving to every nurse in sight, but I couldn\u2019t shake the pit in my stomach. We didn\u2019t have a home to go back to. Rent lapsed months…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2637,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2635\/revisions\/2637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}