I found the baby on a Tuesday night, wrapped in a thin gray blanket, crying softly in the hallway of my apartment building in Pittsburgh.
I was thirty-four, newly divorced, working double shifts as a hospital nurse, and too exhausted to be startled by much anymore—but that sound stopped me in my tracks.
I called the police. Child Protective Services arrived. Forms were filled out. Days blurred into weeks, and somehow that baby—temporarily labeled Baby X—ended up placed in my care.
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