Infant Incident

When I was a baby, I was abandoned soon after birth. Oh, not out on the streets, or on the doorstep of some nameless orphanage somewhere in the slums. Nothing quite so fairy tale as all that. No, I was abandoned in a hospital.

In my hospital, the nurses took babies away to have their photos taken. Mine hangs in pride of place on the wall, with my little squished baby face peering into the camera, a blanket wrapped tightly around me and my tiny hands pinned near my face by the blanket. My nurse took me away to have this photo take while my mum stayed in bed. The nurse promised to bring me back later.

Time passed. I didn’t come back. Mum got worried. Where was the nurse with her baby? Like all good mothers do, she hopped out of bed and went in search of her little lost baby, hunting through the hospital. What had the nurse done with me?

A terrible quality photo of me. the very same taken on that fateful day

After an anxious hunt, there I was, lying in my hospital baby bed, abandoned by the nurse. I don’t know where in the hospital I was. I don’t know where the nurse went after my photo was taken. Maybe she left me somewhere safe. Maybe she needed to run off and do something before she brought me back. Maybe she simply forgot that I needed to be taken back. But, whatever the reason, I was the little abandoned baby in the hospital, who mother came to find her.

Looking at my sisters, my mother and I, you can tell we’re related. We’re far too much alike to be anything else. There’s no chance that we’re not from the same family. But sometimes, with a mischievous grin, I tell people, “I was abandoned as a baby,” and tell my tale.