“You did everything right,” she said, fighting tears.
Later, CPS found temporary foster care. A kind couple, already certified, stepped forward within hours. But Caleb wouldn’t go without Ellie.
He held her tight in the hospital room, even after she fell asleep. The trauma nurse gently tried to take her, but Caleb shook his head.
“She’s okay when I hold her.”
That night, the staff made a decision—he’d sleep beside her.
In one hospital bed, a broken seven-year-old boy curled around his baby sister like a shield.
And outside the window, the first hint of sunrise.
The hearing room was quiet as the judge flipped through the thick stack of documents: medical reports, CPS evaluations, psychological assessments, school progress notes.
Caleb, now eight, sat beside his foster mother, Angela Morris, in a pressed navy-blue shirt, his hands folded tightly in his lap. On the other side of the room, a social worker held Ellie, now a chubby, alert toddler with a mop of brown curls and a pacifier in her mouth.
Caleb had grown taller. He smiled more now. He still flinched sometimes when doors slammed—but the nightmares had become fewer. He had a therapist he trusted. A school he liked. And a home where he and Ellie were never hungry.
