Convincing

His cry was the first thing she heard. Usually, Penelope Bellrose had her headphones in her ears and was too busy keeping her head down in the bustle and chaos of New York. On her way to class, she was lucky on that day as she tried to remember all she could for a test she had no music blaring. Mind blank and her head full of the stress of passing, the twenty-four-year-old on the brink of being twenty-five was not paying attention at first. And when she first heard the wailing of an infant? She at first brushed it off as a bébé being fussy. But then the little tyke kept going. Head going up in concern as the screams got worse, she looked and found the source of the hollering. And saw no one in sight. Panicked as her breath on the wind showed how cold it was, instinct compelled her forward. Seeing no one around, and a baby on a trash pile of pallets and discarded furniture, Penelope’s eyes widened in horror. A little boy, crying from cold and hunger, she was instant picking him up and cradling him close. “Shhh, shhh, shhh, it’s okay. I got you.” Murmuring in French, she rushed into the nearest building and called the police. Going to school feeling like she was going through the motions, Penelope was shocked she managed to pass that test she was so worried about before. No longer even caring she was on track to graduate that upcoming Spring, she was instead thinking of him. The cute little face scrunched up and crying as it wailed for a mother. One that had abandoned him. Going back to the hospital the second her last class was over, she was let in when she told them how she knew the child. Nervous because she was asked everything again by the police officer on duty, he tried to be CSI and glare and ask if she could give an alibi about her true involvement. But the college student was honest, “I found a little boy in the trash officer...I wanted to know if he was okay. That’s it. I don’t know why but...I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t...get him out of my head. I just keep remembering him screaming and crying and thinking, what if I had gotten annoyed and walked away? He could have frozen to death.” Feeling shitty since the kid had been dumped in a very slim traffic area, the beat cop stopped aiming for detective long enough to say a grumbled sorry. Watching the young French woman just wave him off and ask a nurse gently if he was okay, the nurse was kinder. “You’re the one who found him right?” Nodding, Penelope was shocked when the nurse pulled her along and brought her to the fussing child. Only two months and severely underweight, the baby wouldn’t eat as Penelope coming in was told to wash her hands. Passed the child as the nurse fighting to get them to eat sighed in relief for a break, went to another child. It was then the nurse passing Penelope the John Doe baby to her gently informed her, “He doesn’t have anything in his system. He’s just upset. We think he’s been alone with his mother and isn’t use to all these strange hands. Poor thing.” Shushing him and whispering in French, Penelope grabbed the bottle gently and fed him as she sang a song about a little warrior who needed to grow big and strong if he wanted to conquer the world. Little brown eyes watching her soon enough as they fed, the quiet child made both nurses look at her like she was Mother Terresa. But she just stared at him and whispered in disbelief, “Who could ever do this to you?” Sitting with him and burping him after he’d ate a hearty bottle, she had him letting out a mean belch and fart before he was comfortably staring up at her confused. Giggling at him, Penelope whispered teasingly, “You little fighter, you’re gonna give them all the hell they deserve.” His fist holding her blonde locks, she grinned and he seemed to grin back for a moment like he’d heard her and agreed. Finding that little grin in her dreams and thoughts, Penelope barely cared about anything else in the upcoming days and weeks. Finding herself at baby John Doe’s side every day after school and even blowing off the classes she was done with technically and had all the credits she needed to pass. Spending every second getting to know everything about the little boy she’d unintentionally groan attached to, it was one day while they were in a hospital room on the wing and she was making him giggle when a nurse came in with a woman in a pants suit. “Hi.” The woman greeted with a grin, “Hi.” Penelope greeted confused and it was then the nurse said casually, “This is the social worker, Ms. Vivian Parker. She is going to place this little tyke with a family. See if she can’t put him in a good home.” Vivian started to say not to hold out hopes on that when the young woman cradling the child looked her square in the eye. “Is that true?” Vivian didn’t want to lie but she felt she was being forced to. “Yes we will go to great lengths to ensure he goes to a good home-.” Penelope passed the child to the nurse and then asked Vivian to take a walk with her. “Listen I’m not trying to ride your d**k. I know you have a job to you and that kid is just another sad case you’re gonna have to drink a lot of wine to forget. Thing is? I don’t care about every hypothetical sad case, I care about the one I just so happened to be in the mist of right now.” Vivian respected the ballsy woman as she shot straight with her when asking, “Where are you going to place that baby?” Vivian exhaled and then said, “Honestly? I don’t really know.” Penelope didn’t like that as Vivian admitted, “I was just coming to see him tonight because I was already on my way but the couple who was looking to foster suddenly got cold feet. They’d been trying to adopt but hadn’t had luck so they thought fostering would work.” Not going into detail how it was a c***k attempt to save a failing marriage that was pretty much shattered, Vivan was now frustrated. “Foster parents are dwindling in the supply of people who genuinely give a f**k. And while this little one’s face was on the news for three or four cycles, no one’s came forward with anything. And his footprints and fingerprints aren’t in any database meaning he wasn’t born in a hospital. He was probably trafficked or worse. The child of some teenager who thought it’d be easy and found out it wasn’t and left. So...no family, and with the way it’s looking when it comes to a legit foster? He might be placed in a home facility.” Which was a way of saying an orphanage that homed kids from infant to seventeen. All waiting to be aged up so they could get out of the barely funded government program. Shaking her head already hating the sound of that, Penelope looked at the woman and whispered, “And...if I say I wish to adopt him?” The woman looked at her closely and then sighed, “Sweetheart, this ain’t a puppy from a shelter. This is a child. And while I can understand feeling guilty, you don’t need to-.” Penelope laughed a little at the stranger trying to lecture her, “That’s the thing. It's not guilt, it's love. More than anything in the world I can give him. I can’t let what you’re saying is going to be his life happen to that little boy. I know it happens every day and I can’t stop that but....him? I can stop.” It was a pull, a sign, a feeling. Something. But it didn’t matter. Penelope decided in that moment? She wasn’t going to leave before she was able to know that little boy will always be safe, full, and warm. With her. “Tell me what I need to do. And I can do it. Tell me what I need to do to prove I’m fit to adopt him.”