It is highly inconvenient to care about children who are lost or abandoned. There are those moments when we might sit a little taller in our easy chairs and lean farther into the television set to listen to the cable news stories of a child lost, a child dead, and bodies dumped by the side of the road. So perhaps I should not be shocked or dismayed at the two dead teenage girls on the cold steel gurneys in the Coroner’s basement. They were way too complicated and difficult for anyone to care about them when they were alive.

 

Lucy had only recently arrived in California to live with her mother, far from the father who had been sexually abusing her since she was five. Jessica, also seriously physically and sexually abused since she was five, grew up in South Los Angeles. They both were desperately seeking safety and unconditional love. They were angry and aggressive to those around them; the typical foster child who has failed everywhere because they challenge you to love them regardless. So, Lucy ran from her new comfortable home on the Westside and was next seen being carried into a motel room unconscious by a strange man. The 911 call resulted in her being taken to a regional hospital where she died two weeks later from an “overdose.” No one was available to see if she had been drugged and raped---too much trouble to go to the hospital to check that out---and her mother was not very interested in seeking the cause of her death. Lucy was easier in death than she was alive.

 

Jessica, on the other hand, had belonged to Los Angeles for a long time. A chronic Social Services case she had bounced from home to home until finally landing in a new foster home just a few weeks ago. There they quickly noted that she was unwell and she was rushed to a regional hospital where the doctors did not want to “touch” her because she was difficult and pushed them away. She died last week of her infection and kidney failure. 

 

I have to be honest, it is inconvenient for much of our bureaucracy to care about difficult and lost children. Thus the federal lawsuits, etc! I believe it is hard for them to care because they never have to see these children first hand. If they were required to go to the Coroner’s office or sit in our clinic and listen to the stories of abuse, loss, and assault they might feel motivated to make the much needed changes. They become angry with those of us who argue for more. “Why do you insist on doing more than is convenient for the other providers?” It is inconvenient to want to do more for children who need us to step up to be the parent. I remember the days of my own children. It is natural for us to do what we need to do to get our own children to school on time, to music lessons and to their after school sports. They see the dentist, the orthodontist; have regular visits to the pediatrician, tutors when need and a story at bedtime. We would never allow our child to go missing without a report to the police; we would drive the streets desperately looking for that child. We would never accept our child slowly dying at the community hospital because “they are difficult”.  

 

Why in the world do we accept the minimum, no, make that less than the minimum, for children who are lost, invisible, searching for a home and safety? Children without anyone to insist that they get the best! I am determined that we have to be that person. It should never be inconvenient to care---perhaps exhausting, but the visit to the cold, smelly basement of the Coroner’s office is enough to make me more determined.



Astrid Heppenstall Heger, M.D.
Executive Director