He called an ambulance before asking anything else.
When Eli cried, he knelt beside me and asked gently,
“Can I help you hold him?”
No one had ever asked me that before.
At the hospital, the truth came out.
Dehydration. Fever. Untreated infections.
A nurse looked at me with something I didn’t understand back then.
Now I do.
Horror.
Ethan stayed the whole time.
He didn’t rush. Didn’t pressure.
He brought me juice. Found me socks because I still had no shoes.
And when I finally told him what life had been like in that house…
