Left Without Being Seen

She wore a black sweatshirt, hood fully adorned. Black mascara streamed down her pale face as she frantically tried to retrieve her keys from a bag fully stocked with diapers and formula. This was her second emergency department visit in 1 day. On the first, minutes earlier, she delivered the bag and car seat to triage and left quickly without being seen. Were it not for the fact that, distracted by raw emotion, she had forgotten her keys, there surely would not have been a second visit.

She wore hot pink pajamas and sported a blue pacifier. Swaddled in fleece blankets, she slept peacefully in the car seat. Only her tiny hands and face were exposed. She was silent. The attached blue Post-It note said everything, “Please take good care of me. I am loved. I ate last at 1:50 am. I eat every three hours (3.5 to 4 ounces). Thank you.”

She was a proud mother of 2 beautiful Korean children. For years, she has told the magical story of adoption to her sons. “It was a decision made out of love—the most difficult of her life,” she says nightly. Periodically and privately, she has hoped that to be true.

In the early morning of the newly minted year, they met. The physician was called to triage. In triage, the baby sat quietly in the car seat, as the triage nurse provided a synopsis. Then, as quickly as she left, the mother returned—desperately seeking the keys she had forgotten. Shielding her face from view, the mother wanted to be invisible. Seeing the agony, the physician wanted to be heard.

There, for a minute, on a busy New Year's morning, life seemed to come full circle. She asked for a minute of her time and she for anonymity. The physician shared something personal and hopes her words were comforting. The mother hopes her daughter gets a new start. They know it was a decision made entirely out of love, and hope that as the children grow, they truly believe that to be true.