Medical Kidnap Files 1-6, page 127
But however hard it had been for Carmel, it had been that much worse for Kiara. She looked at Kiara now, waiting for her to tell more of her story.
“Carmel was just little,” Kiara explained. “She was eight. We’re six years apart, so I was fourteen. She was too young and too sick to really understand it all. She doesn’t remember a lot.”
Carmel nodded her agreement.
“A fourteen-year-old Black girl in foster care,” Renata said. “I’ll bet that was fun.”
Kiara gave a short laugh and swore. “Oh, you have no idea.” She shook her head, but reconsidered. “Or maybe you do. The amount of racism, bullying, and abuse… no, it wasn’t any picnic.”
“And you weren’t together?” Gabriel asked. “They didn’t put the two of you in the same family?”
“Carmel was in the hospital. They assigned her a foster family, I guess, that she went to when she got out. I was by myself. People didn’t even know I had a sister.”
“That must have been lonely.”
Carmel remembered interminably long days and nights at the hospital. Dragging on forever and ever. Boring hospital rooms, even if she was in the children’s hospital with its bright wall murals. Doctors and nurses came and went, prodding her and asking her questions. The same questions over and over again. No one had visited her as far as she could remember.
Kiara and Carmel had both come out of foster care with a pretty jaundiced view of how the system worked. Foster care was necessary, of course, for those kids who were really in danger from their own families or who were chronic runaways or didn’t have somewhere to go for one reason or another. But Carmel and Kiara should never have ended up there. And when Carmel saw the opportunity to help other kids who had been taken away from their parents for no good reason, she had pushed hard for the chance to get involved.
“How long were you in foster care?” Gabriel asked.
“About… three years. Almost. I was eleven when I got back home, and Kiara was almost seventeen.”
They were all silent for a few minutes. Carmel looked at Kiara and tried to force a smile, but it was weak. She didn’t like thinking about what it had been like. And she had been the lucky one. Kiara said Carmel was always treated like a princess for being so pretty, white, and blond. When she had finally left the hospital with a diagnosis and treatment plan, the family she had gone to had been nice. It wasn’t like living with her own mother, and she was still lonely for her big sister, but they hadn’t abused her. The Smythes had tried to treat her like she was a real member of the family.
Kiara hadn’t been so lucky.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Gabriel watched everyone’s reactions. He knew they would hear more about Kiara’s and Carmel’s time in foster care eventually, but that couldn’t be the focus of their discussions. He met Renata’s eyes.
“Is that everything on the safety plan?” Renata asked.
Kiara nodded. “Yeah. They said they would help me get referrals to specialists. If there’s something wrong with Malachi, then they can fix it, and they’ll know that it isn’t anything that I’m doing.”
“You think social services’ referrals to specialists will be a good thing?” Renata challenged. “Has Carmel told you anything about what it is that we do?”
“Yes. She’s told me all about how you get teens reunited with their parents. Would have been nice to have someone like you around when we were in care and it took them two years to get around to getting us home again. But so what?”
“Our focus is on medical kidnap cases.”
Kiara just stared at Renata blankly, as if she’d never heard the term before. Carmel hadn’t told her. Or Kiara hadn’t listened.
“Kids who are taken away from their parents because they have medical conditions that are mistaken for abuse or neglect. Or because the parents don’t agree with the course of treatment that the specialists want to pursue. It’s easy to experiment on foster kids. You don’t need to worry about whether their biological family agrees with the protocol or not. The foster parents have to agree with what DCFS tells them to do because that’s what they get paid to do. DCFS gets paid by the doctor or clinic for all of the kids that participate in the experimental protocols, and everybody is happy.”
Renata bit off the words and let them hang in the air. Kiara rolled her eyes and turned away, dismissing Renata’s vitriol.
“I’ll be glad to do whatever it is they tell me Malachi needs,” Kiara said in a firm, even voice. “I just want to find out what that is. If there’s something wrong with him and they tell me how to treat him, I’m going to do it. They’re not going to have to take him away from me because I’ll do whatever the doctors say needs to be done. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because sometimes doctors are wrong, maybe?” Renata suggested. “Do you know how many times they’ve nearly killed me? Egomaniacs with a prescription pad. And Gabriel too, right?” Renata nodded at Gabriel to chime in on this note.
He nodded his head. “It was pretty rough. If I’d stayed in the mito program any longer… I don’t know how long I would have lasted. My mom had me on a good diet, and I was getting stronger. Then they swept in and took me off of all of my meds, my diet, fed me food I was allergic to, and put me on an experimental mito protocol that made me really sick.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen here. I’m all for diets and natural treatments, but if the doctors tell me that he needs some special prescription, I’m going to give it to him.”
Carmel put her hand on Kiara’s arm, but Kiara shook it off. It was hard to believe that they were sisters. Not just because of the differences in their appearance, but the attitudes too. Carmel was always eager to help and to learn what they had to tell her. Kiara… she was a tough nut. Not even willing to help herself.
Gabriel snuck a look at the big clock on the wall. “I think we’ve probably been here long enough. We don’t want to attract attention. Next steps…?”
Carmel and Kiara looked blank. Gabriel looked at Renata, a little worried about what she would say. She hadn’t wanted to be there in the first place. She didn’t want to take on a case that involved a baby. Two babies, before very long. Gabriel could tell she hadn’t been impressed with Kiara. Why help the girl if she really didn’t want it?
“One of us should come to the house,” Renata said, surprising him. “Not both of us together, and we’ll have to be careful of how we approach it, but… I think it’s important to see what the social worker sees. You in your home with Malachi. See if we can identify things that you need to change, so that they are less likely to apprehend him.”
Kiara frowned, considering it.
She had just said that she would do anything necessary to avoid DCFS apprehending Malachi. But was she really prepared to follow through? To listen not only to DCFS, who she saw as the authority, but also to a couple of skinny teens who acted like they knew it all?
For a while, Kiara stared at Malachi, playing in the ball pit, and then down at her hands as she contemplated the suggestion. Then she finally nodded.
“Okay. I’ll go one more step and we’ll see how it plays out. I really do want to do what’s best for Malachi, so if there are other things I should be doing, or if you can tell me what to do to keep him from going into foster care where he might be hurt… then I’ll give it a try.”
“Good,” Renata declared. “We’ll want to give it a day or two, give anyone who might be watching the house time to get bored, and then one of us will come.” She looked at Gabriel. “I suppose you want it to be you.”
“What do you think would be best?” Gabriel countered. He was surprised that she was asking. It sounded like she wanted to be the one to pay Kiara a visit at home. And considering how she felt about Carmel, he hadn’t expected that. Something about the case must have attracted her attention if she was not only willing to pursue a case involving a young child, but also wanted to be there herself. In a place that might be under surveillance by DCFS. “We don’t want to be obvious. You might pass better as a friend of Carmel’s. I would stand out more.”
“I could have a boyfriend,” Carmel disagreed.
They all looked at each other, but none of them was willing to jump in and point out the built-in racial biases that DCFS or the cops would have about pretty, blond Carmel dating a young Black man. It would be more likely that Kiara would have a Black boyfriend, but Gabriel was too young for her. He looked older than he was, and maybe they would think that he was old enough for Kiara if they saw him from a distance, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to test the theory.
“It’s not about whether I could be your boyfriend or not,” Gabriel said finally. He looked at Renata and then away again. “It’s about what people would think seeing me go into your house. Whether it would raise their interest or curiosity or would be seen as a normal, everyday occurrence.”
Carmel probably couldn’t say that she regularly had Black young men to her house for a visit. The state and the valley were so predominantly white that she wouldn’t have much opportunity, even if everybody were willing to cross racial lines and incur the gossip and criticism that would follow.
“You would probably be the better choice,” Gabriel reiterated, looking at Renata. “Do you want to do it?”
Renata gave a brusque nod. She didn’t say that she wanted to, but she would. It was vital for them to be able to fly under the radar.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Renata and Gabriel hadn’t told Carmel where they were staying. It was best that as few people as possible knew where they were. If Carmel were in contact with Judge Dee-dee or anyone else who might be willing to follow up on those outstanding warrants, then it was best that she didn’t know where they were to tell anyone. They couldn’t be one hundred percent sure that she was fully on their side or that her house wasn’t being bugged for little tidbits of information like that.
Renata preferred to sleep rough in one of the little tent cities that sprang up in local parks and sheltered areas. But it was December, and it was cold. It was the second winter that Gabriel had been homeless, and they knew from the year before that if he slept outdoors when it was getting so cold outside, he would be in trouble. He might get pneumonia. He might go to sleep and never wake up. They’d already had a scare recently when his body had decided that it was too cold and just started shutting down. That meant no more outdoor sleeping until the weather began to get warm in the spring.
Shelters were not the best idea. A lot of stuff went on at shelters, and neither wanted to be the target of any negative attention. They wouldn’t be able to stay together at a shelter. Even those that accepted family groups would still make Gabriel and Renata sleep in different rooms. And more often, the shelters that accepted women and children were not the same ones that accepted men. They avoided shelters unless they were really desperate and there was nowhere else to go.
But they did have safe houses, homes of friends to the movement who were willing to put them up for a day or two. Hopefully, people that social services did not know were friends of the movement.
They had only used Nelson Schmeer a couple of times, so they felt like he was a pretty safe bet. A teen like they were, he told his mother only that he was having a couple of friends over for the night to watch movies. They spread their sleeping bags out on the floor and watched one movie, then Nelson left them alone to sleep.
Renata could hear Gabriel moving around restlessly. It was always challenging to get comfortable and sleep in a new place, but Renata had a feeling there was more to it than that.
“Worrying about Blondie and her sister?” Renata whispered.
Gabriel flipped over again and inched his sleeping bag closer to hers. They were used to cuddling up to preserve body heat when they were outside. Sleeping a foot away from each other felt like a long distance.
“I’m not worried about Carmel… but about Kiara and Malachi? Yeah.”
Renata nodded, even though it was doubtful he could see the movement in the dark. “Things are not good.”
“You think he’ll be taken?”
“Yes. I’ll see what we can do to help them, but… I don’t see it being very long until they decide that she has breached the safety plan.”
“It seems like she’s really trying.”
“We both know how much DCFS cares about that.”
“Yeah… I know…”
They hadn’t cared how much Gabriel’s mother, Keisha, had been devoted to Gabriel and helping him feel better despite his mito. It didn’t matter how much time she spent researching his condition or tracking down solutions that would help him. It didn’t matter that she was essentially a single mother while his dad was overseas for prolonged deployments and that she worked a full-time job as well as trying to provide him with everything that might help his condition and homeschooling him. When it came down to it, she hadn’t agreed to follow the protocol recommended by the doctor, so they eliminated her as a decision-maker.
Even going home to visit her, Gabriel would run the risk of her being charged with something in connection with helping him to escape foster care. Even though she’d had nothing to do with it. That wouldn’t stop them from throwing her in jail until she either agreed to a plea or found someone with enough influence to get the charges dropped. Gabriel had talked to her briefly a few times, very short calls from burner phones that were never used again. He hadn’t dared go back to visit her.
“The fact that Kiara was in foster care for three years is a red flag,” Renata murmured, hoping that Gabriel hadn’t dropped off to sleep in the few minutes she’d been quiet.
“Why? It shows that she knows the system and knows what will happen if she doesn’t do exactly what they say. And she says she’s willing to do whatever they tell her, to the letter.”
“But saying you’ll do it and actually finding out what they want from you are two different things. Her intentions are good… but it isn’t going to take very long.”
“You think it’s a problem that she’s been in care?”
“Sure. They know that kids in foster care are more likely to have attachment issues. They’ve been moved around to different families, don’t know who to trust. Can’t trust. And maybe can’t bond with their own children.” Renata sighed. “Did you watch her with Malachi?”
“Well, most of the time, he was just playing in the ball pit while we talked.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh… you think that she should have been playing with him. But we needed to talk. The reason we chose the play place was so that Malachi would be entertained while we met.”
“But she didn’t smile at him and call out to him, hover over him like first-time moms do. Take pictures with her phone. After you went over there, she looked over at him a few times to make sure that he was okay, but she didn’t engage with him,” Renata pointed out.
“She was just stressed. I don’t think it means anything.”
“It probably doesn’t. But DCFS could say that it did. They come in and see that he’s been left to play by himself while Kiara does other things… they decide she hasn’t bonded. And if she hasn’t bonded, then she’ll overreact when he does something wrong. She’ll forget to feed him. She’ll decide that he’s more trouble than he’s worth.”
“Huh.” Gabriel pondered this. “You really do think that Kiara having been in foster care will be a problem.”
“Yeah. It’s a risk factor for abuse and failure to thrive.”
“Isn’t the system great? Take the two of them into foster care when they don’t need to be, keep them there for three years, long past the time that Mrs. Oss needed assistance and then watch them to see if they become abusers.”
“It sucks,” Renata agreed. She yawned and shifted closer to him to cuddle. It helped to have him right against her, just like when they were sleeping rough. “You know I’m not keen on Carmel, but it really is a kick in the pants.”
“Not sure what you have against her.”
Renata didn’t answer. It was difficult to put into words the feeling that she had around Carmel. She just knew that Carmel couldn’t be trusted. They had allowed her to participate in a few operations, and Renata couldn’t say that she had ever done anything wrong, but she still had a feeling, a prickling in the back of her neck whenever she was around the girl. Something told her that Carmel couldn’t be trusted and that they couldn’t believe anything she said without independent verification.
Of course, Renata never believed anyone without independent verification. That was what had kept her alive.
“Were you as surprised as I was that Carmel even has a sister?” Gabriel asked sleepily. “She’s never even mentioned her before.”
“No, I wasn’t surprised.”
He shifted, propping himself up slightly to stare at her in the darkness. “You weren’t surprised?”
“No. I already knew that.”
“She already told you? Maybe I wasn’t paying attention when she has mentioned it before.”
“No, she’s never mentioned Kiara until now. Which I think is a little strange. If you had a sibling, it wouldn’t be a secret, would it?”
“No… I don’t think so. But I don’t have a sibling, so I don’t know.”
“I don’t either. But it seems a little weird never to mention that she has one. Unless they have a big fight and don’t talk to each other anymore, and it didn’t seem like it when they were together today.”
“Maybe they had a fight, but now that Kiara has come home, they decided to make up.” Gabriel put his head back down. His breath lengthened out, and Renata thought he was asleep, but then he spoke again. “How did you know about Kiara if Carmel didn’t tell you about her?”
“I snooped. Ran background on her. Looked around when we were at her house before.”
“You stalked her?”
“Yep.”
