I work double shifts at the hospital to keep my boys fed and housed, and every day, I carry a quiet fear that something will go wrong while I’m gone. The day a police officer stood in my driveway holding my toddler, my worst fear had come true… just not the way I’d imagined.
My phone vibrated in my coat pocket at 11:42 a.m. that day, right in the middle of attending to a patient in room seven.
I almost let it go. I had three more patients, and my break wasn’t until two.
But something made me excuse myself, step into the hallway, and check the screen.
I almost let it go.
It was an unknown number. I still answered.
“Ma’am? This is Officer Benny calling from the police dispatch. You need to come home immediately. We have an important matter to discuss.”
I pressed my back against the hallway wall.
“Are my children okay? What happened?”
“Please just come home, Ma’am,” the Officer replied. “As soon as you can.”
The call ended before I could ask another question.
“You need to come home immediately.”
I told my charge nurse it was a family emergency, and I left in the middle of my shift still wearing my hospital badge. I drove home through two red lights that I ignored despite noticing.
The drive was 20 minutes long, and I spent every one of them rehearsing the worst.
My oldest, Logan, was 17. He’d had two run-ins with the police, neither of them serious by any objective standard. When he was 14, his friends organized a bike race down the street. It ended with three of them nearly taking out a parked car. An officer gave them all a talking-to in the hardware store parking lot.
Logan still says it was the most embarrassed he’s ever been in his life.
