I gave my daughter up for adoption from a prison so she could have a better life… and thirty years later, she appeared before me in a white coat, ready to save my life. The worst part wasn’t seeing her so close without being able to touch her… it was realizing that she wore around her neck the only proof that she was still mine.
It wasn’t a scream. Not even a question. It was a broken word, steeped in disbelief, barely a breath—as if by speaking it, she might shatter something sacred that had been suspended for thirty years. I felt the world vanish around us. The infirmary, the cot, the scent of antiseptic, the hum of the fluorescent…
