Finding a Family

Chapter 3

Freddie's POV
I had finished some writing and was getting ready to turn in for the night. I noticed a text from my husband that he wouldn't be home until morning and that he would explain tomorrow. Ordinarily a spouse might find a text like that suspicious but when you're married to an ER doctor it's the norm. I figured he probably had a lot of patients or was covering for another doctor. I called it a night and knew I would see Alan in the morning.

The next morning I woke up, fed the cats and started on breakfast. As I was getting breakfast ready my husband walked through the door. He looked exhausted and I could tell he had a rough night. "How was work darling?" I asked him right before I laid a kiss on him. "It was a long night," he replied. "A lot of patients?" I asked him.  He looked at me and replied, " no, just a few but there was a girl," I looked at him intrigued. He went on, "she came from a pretty abusive home so abusive that her mind regressed to one of a child. She was so scared I had to stay with her all night. I didn't get much sleep; she kept waking up crying throughout the night because she was having nightmares." "The poor thing, how could anyone be so cruel?" I replied.  "I know, Leon said she'll never recover from this and that she'll always be in this state of mind. I can't stop thinking of what is going to happen to her and who will take her in," he replied.

As we were having breakfast Alan couldn't stop talking about this girl. How afraid she was to eat and how badly bruised she was.  He told me about how she begged him not to leave her this morning and how he had to promise her he would be back. As he was talking about this girl I could see the look in him that I knew all too well. The look in his eyes that meant he wanted to do something about this only he hadn't admitted it to himself yet. Although he would never admit it to himself at this moment, I knew that he had fallen in love with this girl and wanted to adopt her.

The truth is we always wanted to have children. We just never put our hopes into action. The reality of being a gay couple is that the possibility of us facing discrimination in the adoption process would be very high; the likelihood would be no different with this girl but this seemed like our moment to finally make our dream of having a child come true. Now I just had to get Alan to admit his hopes to himself.

"So when are we going to bring her home?" I asked knowing how blunt I was being. My husband looked at me incredibly shocked and could only bring himself to say "what?!?" "Alan it's clear that you deeply care for this girl. For Christ's sake you sat by her bedside all night." I told him. " I've just met her, we don't even have the slightest idea would it would be like to be her parents," he replied. "It wouldn't be any different with any other child darling, no one knows what parenthood is like until they bring their child home." I argued. "This girl is different, she is going to need so much more attention than any other child," he protested. "Alan, you said it yourself, God only knows what's going to happen to her if we don't take her in," I told him firmly. He simply looked at me out of arguments

"Alan, how about you at least take me to meet her. We can see how she reacts to me and how she interacts with us together and if it goes well afterwords we can discuss the possibility of us taking her in," I suggested. "Alright,"he agreed. "But we've got to think over and discuss this very carefully, we can't just jump into something like this so quickly," he stated in his attempt to have the last word. "Alright darling," I told him right before I kissed him and let him think he won. "I'm going back to the hospital later today, that's when I'll take you to introduce you to her," he told me. I chuckled telling him, "darling, you don't work today why would you be going to the hospital?" He replied with, "she needs me."