The woman looked at the unwanted child with a kindly smile. He began to cry.
As a nurse, this was not a new situation for her, but it moved her every time. The baby had been found in a cardboard box with a dirty blanket tucked around his tiny body. A passer-by had seen it on the steps of a church and reported it. He would be well cared for here. He would, of course, grow up as an orphan. He would go into foster care. None of these went well. He was moved around from one to another, never being really wanted, never really loved.
He was fifteen when he managed to escape yet another unhappy foster home and dropped out of the system. He managed to stay under the radar and made his way by begging on the streets.
At the age of seventeen he found work with a criminal gang. It paid well and gave him a roof over his head.
At the age of twenty he met a girl. She became pregnant and they married.
At the age of twenty-two his cheating wife left him with another man and took their child with her.
At the age of twenty-four, the gang he’d been working for was broken up by police raids, along with several arrests.
At the age of twenty-five, the drinking had got the better of him and he was an alcoholic.
Finally, at the age of forty-three, after years of walking the streets, after suffering several bouts of sickness, after a life of begging, of continually moving from town to town, he was truly homeless. He had no prospects. He’d been moved on from his recent sleeping place behind the bins at the rear of a service station by an angry manager who reported him to the police.
Two nights later, a policewoman found him, shivering beneath a filthy blanket. “Come on, you can’t sleep here,” she said, with a kind voice. “Let’s see if we can’t get you into the homeless shelter.”
She thought she would have seen enough of these cases to feel less emotional about their plight, but it always affected her the same way. After all, he was just another human being down on his luck. They made their way through town until they entered the warmth of the building. They waited for someone to come to the front desk.
The woman looked at the unwanted man with a kindly smile. He began to cry.