“Did you hear about the Harris family?” Verna Scott glanced up from the mountain of case files on her desk. It seemed that the more she worked, the higher the stack grew. One wrong move and the files would go tumbling to the floor. Files containing the most intimate details of broken lives.
Nichole Graham, her longtime coworker, was standing in the doorway.
Verna took off her black-framed glasses and gently massaged the bridge of her nose. She wasn’t sure if she could handle any bad news today. They’d gotten a report earlier in the week that two children who had been placed in separate foster homes had run away and still not been found. It had been in all the newspapers and on television. Everyone was pointing fingers. Verna was the director of the division. Thankfully, her staff was cleared. They’d followed protocol to the letter and the assigned social workers had been to see the families in question at least two days before the kids ran away. She could only pray they would be found quickly and unharmed.
Verna had been a certified social worker for nearly a decade. She had her doctorate in child psychology and was passionate about her work. There was no greater satisfaction than seeing a family reunited, a runaway teen get the kind of loving care he or she needed or watching the countless foster children placed in homes with people who loved them. Unfortunately in her line of work, the tragedies often outnumbered the triumphs. There were days, like this one, when she didn’t know if she could keep working. That’s why she’d been carefully and slowly formulating plan B for the past two years.
“Do I want to know?” Verna asked with a tired smile.
Nichole stepped inside, lifted some overstuffed files from the one wooden chair and plopped down. She crossed her long legs at the knee. “They got burned out last night.”
Verna lowered her head and covered her face with her hands, then looked across the desk at Nichole, her own anguish reflected in her coworker’s blue eyes. “How bad?”
“They lost pretty much everything. We have them in a hotel for the time being. The Red Cross is helping. But, of course, we had to remove the children who were with them.”
Verna nodded at the inevitable and clenched her long fingers into fists. “Of course. We just placed the sister and brother with the Harrises. It was so difficult finding a family willing to take them both, and now this.”
“I know.”
“Those poor kids.” She banged the table with a fist as she looked off into the distance then around the room, which was nearly bursting with files of other children. The ache inside her rose in a wave, leaving her feeling helpless. Rare tears pricked her eyes.
“Verna…we’ll manage—” Nichole’s brow creased. “Are you okay?” The two of them had worked together for the past five years, and even in some of the most dire situations, Nichole had never seen Verna crack. She got up and came around the desk to sit on the edge. Reaching out, she covered Verna’s tight fist. “Talk to me,” she coaxed.
Verna looked up, and the worry in Nichole’s expression propelled her out of her seat and across the room to where her purse hung on the wobbly coatrack. She unzipped the bag and took out a Dunkin’ Donuts napkin. She dabbed her eyes and pushed away the countless images of hurt and confused children, before turning toward Nichole. She sniffed, cleared her throat and tugged on the hem of her navy blue jacket. “Allergies,” she said, forcing a smile.
“How long have we been friends—or at least coworkers?” Nichole asked. “We’re both trained to see beneath the surface. Whenever you want to talk, I’m here.”
Verna swallowed over the tightness in her throat and nodded.
“Thanks, Nikki. I appreciate that.”
Nichole stood. “I’m going to start looking at some options for the kids.”
“Try to keep them together,” Verna said, but her tone reflected the reality of what they faced: red tape and not enough families willing to take two adolescents into their home.
“I’ll keep you posted,” Nichole said before walking out.
Once the door closed, Verna squeezed her eyes shut, mentally berating herself for her lapse. She prided herself on her professionalism and objectivity, at least on the surface. For the most part, Verna was all about business. It was the only way she’d managed to get through the thousands of cases over the years. To become attached would be detrimental to the child, the family and the caseworker.
She’d earned the directorship of the New York office of the Agency for Children’s Services nearly eight years earlier. She was a career social worker with multiple degrees and certifications. She could easily open her own office, set her hours and decide on her cases. But she’d stayed in the trenches, digging through the debris of human heartache and trying to fix it. During the last few years, though, she’d begun to feel more and more that she was swimming upstream with no shore in sight. The several handfuls of successes were no longer enough. She wanted—no, needed—to be hands on, and so she’d started making plans. She’d visited Canada several years earlier and connected with people running an organization called Eva’s Initiatives in Toronto. She’d particularly been interested in the Family Reconnect Program that worked with young people and their families to help them rebuild relationships after family breakdowns. When she’d returned from that trip she was determined to use it as a model for her own program one day.
She turned and looked out her fifth-floor office window onto the gray concrete below. She knew it was time. She’d done all she could do here.