A female cop in her team set out searching for a little girl who calls 9-1-1 and says her mommy’s not waking up. Circumstances take a horrific turn when the officer barges into her house. That evening, officers were busier than usual at the police station that day investigating a murder. All the helplines were busy with calls routed to various emergencies from all over the city. And then there was a strange call from a little girl.
« 9-1-1, what’s your emergency? » the dispatcher answered as an eerie silence sprawled in the background, followed by a loud wheezing sound on the receiver.
« I’m hungry. Mommy doesn’t wake up all day, » a little girl spoke as she burst into tears.
« Where are you? »
« I don’t know. Mommy told me to call 9-1-1 if I’m in trouble, » answered the girl, sounding terrified about something.
The dispatcher then pressed the girl for more details about her location.
« Calm down, and what’s your name? »
« Maggie. »
« Maggie, can you tell me your address? »
After a grave silence, Maggie gave the dispatcher the address she lived at earlier, but she didn’t know where she currently was.
« Maggie, can you tell me about your current location? Can you describe it? »
Although the little girl didn’t know the address, she was able to give the officer visual clues to her current location.
« I can see big gray houses outside. There’s a big angry dog barking outside. There are trees and a broken gate outside. »
« All right, Maggie, stay where you are. We’re sending help right away. »
The details were then passed on to Officer Nancy, 34, and her team. They immediately left in search of the girl and arrived at the first address she’d given. The cops marched to the address and looked around for details matching the girl’s description but saw it was entirely different.
« Anyone in there? » Nancy knocked on the door, but nobody answered. She peeped into the glass window and saw it was dark and dusty inside. It appeared to have been unlived in for a very long time.
Nancy then checked with the neighbors and learned that a family of three, a man, his wife, and a little girl named Maggie, used to live there.
« Do you know where they are now? »
« No, officer, » a man told Nancy. « After Mr. Jakes died in an accident six months ago, his wife and daughter became very poor. The landlord kicked them out because they couldn’t pay rent. I don’t know their address, but I heard from a friend who’d seen them in an impoverished area 12 miles from here. »
Nancy followed the clues and took off to that spot. It was getting darker, and to make things worse, the area was out of electricity.
« Hush, one second, » Nancy silenced a fellow officer after hearing a faint sound of a dog barking somewhere quite far from their spawn. She recalled Maggie mentioning a dog that constantly kept barking near her whereabouts.
« That might be it. Let’s go that way. »
Nancy instructed her team to follow her and arrived at a small shabby house. Nancy turned on the flashlight to get a clearer view and noticed a silhouette of someone near the window. She looked closely and saw a little girl crying and waving for help. A stray dog was constantly barking outside and charged towards the cops. Nancy quickly picked a pebble up and hurled it at the dog, scaring it away. Then she kicked the door open and entered the house, guessing little about what else was inside.
« Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay, don’t cry, » Nancy comforted Maggie, who ran to her crying. The girl looked as though she was starving.
« I’m hungry. Mommy’s not waking up all day. She’s sleeping, » she kept chanting repeatedly.
Nancy carried Maggie outside and put her in the car.
« Please give her some biscuits. I’ll be right back, » she told her team and went back inside to check where Maggie’s mother was. She searched for the woman in every nook and corner of the house but couldn’t find her. As Nancy kept looking, she found a doorway to a basement. She walked in and found Maggie’s mother lying unconscious on the floor. Nancy raced to the scene and touched the woman to awaken her, only to feel her cold body. Maggie’s mother was dead.
« Officers, get in here quick! » Nancy freaked out and immediately alerted medics and social services. Moments later, an ambulance arrived and scooped the woman’s body up to be taken for an autopsy.
Nancy didn’t know how to disclose the news to Maggie because she’d been thinking her mom was sleeping.
« How’ll I tell her her mother’s dead? » Nancy wondered.
« Mommy, where are they taking my mommy? Mommy, wait! » Maggie ran after the ambulance. Nancy stopped and held her tight and tried comforting her.
« Sweetie, mommy will be fine. Be a good girl and listen to what I say. »
« No, I want to go to mommy. Leave me. »
« Sweetie, mommy will be back. You’ll stay with me until then, alright? »
Maggie began to cry. She clutched her little teddy bear tight. When social services arrived moments later, they told Nancy that the girl would be sent to a foster home. For some reason, the cop didn’t like the idea, and it hurt her more to think about the impact it would make on five-year-old Maggie when she learned her mom was dead.
« No, I’ll take the child home tonight. She has to clean up and eat and calm down. I’ll bring her to the shelter tomorrow. »
Despite weighing up the risks, Nancy took Maggie home.
« My God, darling, who is this? » Jacob, Nancy’s husband, was stunned when he answered the door and saw Nancy holding an asleep Maggie in her arms.
« I’ll tell you everything, honey, but not now. I’m tired. Can we eat first? I found her mother’s body in the basement, » Nancy narrated everything to Jacob.
« Were you able to find out how she died? »
« No, I don’t know how to tell her. She still thinks her mother’s fine in the hospital. Her heart will break when she comes to know the truth. Poor thing. »
« But how long do we keep her with us? » Jacob asked when a strange idea struck Nancy that night after Maggie fell asleep.
« Darling, I was thinking, why don’t we adopt Maggie? » Nancy asked Jacob. « We’ve been trying for a baby for a really long time. I really don’t know what’s wrong with my body. The tests are fine, there are no complications, but I don’t know why I’m not able to conceive. »
As it turned out, Nancy and Jacob couldn’t conceive for several years. They tried every method to have babies but to no avail. At some point, Nancy had even given up on the idea of becoming a mother and began focusing entirely on her career. She was exhausted and was constantly in low spirits, assuming she could never bear a child. Being around Maggie healed her grieving heart, even if it had just been for a few hours.
« Honey, look at her. She’s a little angel who needs parental love and support. She’ll be put up for adoption, and some random couple will adopt her. Why don’t we take her in? She’s such a beautiful little miracle. What do you think? »
Jacob reflected on Nancy’s words as he looked at Maggie, who was fast asleep between them. He felt their innocence and presence abolish the hollow in their lives and realized that this was the joy he’d craved all his life. It didn’t matter to him that Maggie was not his biological child. According to him, a family was about love and affection, not genetics. Jacob agreed to the adoption, but the next big challenge was how Maggie would react to seeing her mother’s funeral.
The next day, Nancy left Maggie at the foster home, promising to come for her soon, and took her to her mother’s funeral. Two days later, anxiety kicked in as Nancy led Maggie to her mother’s coffin. She didn’t know how to tell the little one that her mother had died of a heart attack, as revealed in the autopsy.
« Honey, stay right here. This place is so quiet, isn’t it? » she tried distracting Maggie.
« Yeah, full of butterflies and flowers and candles. What are those crosses for? And what’s in that black box? »
Poor Maggie didn’t know that it was a coffin that held her mother’s lifeless body.
« Sweetheart, sometimes when God loves us and becomes overly protective of us, he invites us to his house in heaven, and we can live there with him forever. »
« A house in heaven? » Maggie exclaimed.
« Yes, sweetie. »
« Where’s mommy? I want to see her. »
« Honey, your mommy has gone to live with God, and she told me to take care of you. You’ll know everything when you become big. »
Nancy’s heart ripped apart as she couldn’t explain it further to a naive Maggie. Tears endlessly streamed down her eyes as she hugged the girl tight and realized it was time to take the next most significant decision of her life.
A few months later, Jacob and Nancy adopted Maggie and threw a lavish party for friends and family to celebrate their joy. Jacob raised a toast, his laughter filling the party home.
« I thought the happiest day of my life was when I met Nancy, » he began, « but I was wrong. I was the happiest when I saw my wife holding a little miracle fast asleep in her arms, and when she asked me, ‘Honey, can we be her parents?’ I couldn’t deny the pleasure of becoming a dad. Cheers to my happy little family of three. »
« No, no, no, honey, wait, not three, » Nancy interrupted Jacob, who was shocked. « We’re gonna be a happy little family of four, » she revealed, handing him an envelope with a positive pregnancy test.
Jacob couldn’t believe his eyes and was indeed the happiest man on Earth. Nancy’s prayers were answered most beautifully at the right time.
« Happy little family of four, everyone, » Jacob raised a toast, his tears of joy gushing from his eyes.