“No. Let me see.”

Reluctantly Roberta takes her hand from the image. Cam drags it toward him, rotates it, and enlarges it. He can tell the picture was not taken with the girl’s permission. It’s framed at an odd angle. Perhaps taken secretly. A memory flashes. This same girl. On a bus.

“That picture is not supposed to be here,” Roberta says. “Can we move on now?”

“Not yet.”

Cam can’t quite tell where the picture was taken. It’s outdoors. Dusty. The girl plays a piano under something dark and metallic that shades her. The girl is beautiful.

“Clipped wings. Broken heaven.” Cam closes his eyes, remembering Roberta’s order that he find the proper words before he speaks. “She’s like . . . an angel damaged when she fell to earth. She plays music to heal herself, but nothing can heal her brokenness.”

“Very nice,” says Roberta unconvincingly. “On to the next one.”

Roberta reaches over and tries to drag the picture away again, but Cam slides it to his corner of the table, out of her reach. “No. Stays here.”

The fact that Roberta is bothered by this just makes Cam more curious. “Who is she?”

“Nobody important.” But clearly from Roberta’s reaction she is.

“I will meet her.”

Roberta chuckles bitterly. “Very unlikely.”

“We’ll see.”

They get on with their mental exercises, but Cam’s mind stays on the girl. Someday he will find out who she is and meet her. He will learn everything he needs to know, or more accurately, unify and organize all the things that are already there in his fragmented brain. Once he does, he’ll be able to speak to this girl with confidence—and then, in his own words, and in whatever language he needs to, he’ll be able to ask her why she looks so sad, and what unfortunate twist of fate has left her in a wheelchair.

Part Two

Whollies

34 CHILDREN ABANDONED UNDER NEBRASKA’S SAFE-HAVEN LAW

by Nate Jenkins, The Associated Press

Friday, November 14, 2008

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) Nebraska officials geared up Friday for a special legislative session designed to deal with a unique “safe haven” law whose unintended consequences have allowed parents to abandon nearly three dozen children as old as 17.

As the session to correct the law approached, a 5-year-old boy was dropped off at an Omaha hospital on Thursday night. Earlier in the day, a woman dropped off two teenagers at another Omaha hospital, but one of them, a 17-year-old girl, fled. Authorities have not found her yet.

As of Friday afternoon, 34 children had been abandoned under the Nebraska law, five of them from other states.

Nebraska was the last state to enact a safe-haven law, intended to take in unwanted newborns. But unlike laws in other states, Nebraska’s doesn’t include an age limit.

Some observers have interpreted the current law as applying to children as old as 18.

The full article can be found at: http://articles.nydailynews.com/2008-11-14/news/17910664_1_safe-haven-law-omaha-hospital-unique-safe-haven-law

4 - Parents

They’re together as they open the door. A father and mother, dressed for bed. Worry lines fill their foreheads as they see the nature of their visitors. This is an anticipated yet unexpected moment.

A Juvey-cop stands at the door with three plainclothes officers to back him up. The lead Juvey-cop is young. They all seem young. They recruit them earlier and earlier these days.

“We’re here to process Unwind subject 53-990-24. Noah Falkowski.” The parents glance at each other in alarm.

“You’re a day early,” the mother says.

“The schedule has been pushed up,” the lead cop tells her. “We have the contractual right to change the pickup date. Can we please have access to the subject?”

The father takes a step forward to look at the name on the officer’s uniform.

“Look here, Officer Mullard,” he says in a loud whisper, “we’re not prepared to surrender our son just yet. As my wife has told you, we were expecting you tomorrow. You’ll have to come back then.”

But E. Robert Mullard waits for no one. He barges into the house, with his team following behind him.

“Good God!” the father says. “Have some decency.”

Mullard lets out a guffaw. “Decency? What do you know about decency?” Then he looks down the bedroom hallway. “Noah Falkowski!” he calls loudly. “If you’re back there, come out now.”

A fifteen-year-old boy peeks out of a bedroom doorway, takes one look at the guests, and slams his door. Mullard signals to the brawniest of his cohorts. “He’s all yours.”

“I’m on it.”

“Stop him, Walter!” the woman begs her husband. Walter, put on the spot, turns to Mullard with a vengeance. “I want to talk to your superior.”

And then Mullard pulls out a gun. “You’re in no position to make demands.”

It’s clearly just a tranq pistol, but considering that nasty business about the Juvey-cop killed with his own gun, Walter and his wife aren’t about to take any chances.

“Sit down,” Mullard says, nodding toward the dining room. The couple hesitates. “I said sit down!” And then two of Mullard’s team force them to sit in two dining room chairs. The father, a reasonable man, assumes he’s dealing with another reasonable young professional like himself.

“Is this all really necessary, Officer Mullard?” he asks, in a calmer, more accommodating tone.

“My name isn’t Mullard, and I’m not a Juvey-cop.” Suddenly it hits the man how obvious this is. He knew this kid was too young to have that kind of authority. The scars on his face made him seem a little . . . well . . . seasoned, but still he was too young. How could Walter have been so easily fooled? And isn’t there something familiar about this young man’s face? Has he seen him before, possibly in the news? The man is rendered speechless by this unexpected turn of nonprofessional events.

5 - Connor

The best part of these missions is the look on the parents’ faces when they realize that the tables have been turned. How their eyes dart down toward the tranq gun aimed at them, suddenly realizing that their unwind order is now nothing but a piece of paper.

“Who are you?” asks the father. “What is it you want?”

“We want what you no longer want,” Connor tells him. “We want your son.” Then Trace, the muscular team member he sent after Noah, comes out of the bedroom holding the struggling kid.

“They don’t make bedroom locks like they used to,” Trace says.

“Lemme go,” shouts the kid. “Lemme go!” Connor goes to him while Hayden, also on the rescue team, pulls a tranq gun to make sure the couple doesn’t get any ideas.

“Noah, your parents were about to unwind you,” Connor tells him. “In fact, the Juvies are coming tomorrow—but luckily for you, we came first.”

There’s a horrified look on the kid’s face. He shakes his head, denying the possibility. “You’re lying!” Then he looks to his parents, not so sure anymore. “He’s lying, right?”

Connor doesn’t let the parents answer. “The truth—you owe him that much.”

“You have no right to do this!” the mother yells.

“The truth!” demands Connor.

Then the father sighs, and says, “Yes, what he says is true. I’m sorry, Noah.”

Now Noah casts a furious gaze at his parents, and then turns to Connor. Connor can see tears building behind his fury.

“Are you going to hurt them?” Noah asks.

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

Connor shakes his head. “Sorry, that’s not what we do. Someday you’ll be grateful we didn’t.”

Noah looks down. “No, I won’t.”

Trace, no longer having to hold Noah quite so tightly, escorts him back to his bedroom so Noah can shove a few things into his backpack; what little he can salvage from fifteen years of life.

While the rest of Connor’s team checks out the home, making sure there is no one else present to call the police or otherwise foul up the mission, Connor hands a pad and pen to the father.

“What’s this for?”

“You’re going to write down the reasons you decided to have your son unwound.”

“What’s the point?”

“We know you have reasons for doing it,” Connor says. “I’m sure they’re stupid; I’m sure they’re selfish and seriously screwed up, but they’re still reasons. If nothing else, it’ll help us to know what kind of pain in the ass Noah is, so maybe we can deal with him better than you did.”

“You keep saying we,” the mother asks. “Who’s we?”

“We’re the ones saving your son’s freaking life. That’s all you need to know.”

The father looks down pitifully at the little notepad.

“Write,” Connor says. Neither he nor the mother look up as Trace escorts Noah out of the house into the waiting car.

“I hate you!” he yells back at them. “I never meant it when I said it before, but now I do.”

Connor can tell it cuts deeply into these parents, but not as deeply as the scalpels of a Chop Shop.

“Someday, if he makes it to seventeen, he may give you a shot at forgiveness. If he does, don’t throw that chance away.”

They say nothing to that. The father just looks down at the pad, scribbling and scribbling. When he’s done, he hands it back to Connor. Rather than a manifesto, the man has written down his excuses in efficient bullet points. Connor reads them out loud, as if each one was an accusation against them.

“ ‘Disrespect and disobedience.’ ”

Those are always the first reasons. If every parent unwound a kid due to disrespect, the human race would go extinct in a single generation.

“ ‘Destructive behavior to self and property.’ ”

Connor knows a bit about self-destructive behavior and did his share of vandalizing in times of frustration. But most kids get over that, don’t they? It never ceases to amaze him how everything—even unwinding—is geared toward the quick fix. Connor looks at the third bullet point and has to laugh.

“ ‘Lack of personal hygiene’?”

The woman throws her husband an angry gaze for writing that.

“Ooh, I like this one!” Connor says. “ ‘Diminished prospects for future.’ Sounds like a stock report!”

At every rescue mission, Connor reads aloud the reasons, and each time he wonders if it’s the same list his parents would have written. This time, the last reason chokes Connor up a bit.

“ ‘Our own failure as parents.’ ”

And then he gets mad at himself. These parents haven’t earned his sympathy. If it’s their failure, then why should their son have to pay for it?

“Tomorrow, when the Juvey-rounders come for him, you’ll tell them that he ran away, and you don’t know where he went. You won’t talk about us, or what happened here today, because if you do, we’ll know. We monitor all the police frequencies.”