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all wrinkle their noses. I’m so ashamed I begin to cry.
    I hear them talking about me as they shift my body from gurneyto cot, poke IVs into myarms and stick all manner of tubes up my nose, down my throat and up into my bladder. “There’s no way,” the doctors say. “He’s dying. He weighs forty-three pounds.”
    I want to die. I need to die.At long last, the mercyof death, an end to this guilt, pain, hunger and endless desolation that has lasted the whole of myshort life.
    The two cops who had found me turn away. I can hear them crying. I keep drifting in and out, but whenever I’m in, I stare at the backs of the two cops. Mymind is enshrouded with a thick narcotic fog, and I fight mywaythrough it to form two questions: How could my parents do what they’ve done to me? How can total strangers care so much about me that they’re crying? Something bursts through mywill, mydecision to let go and stop fighting. Myheart is clogged with a wondrous pain. I know now that I have to live. If those two policemen can care enough about me to cry, there must be something to live for. I don’t rationalize this as clearly as it appears on paper, but I know I need to survive. It’s not necessarily mypreference. It’s just what I have to do.
    They do their part, the docs and nurses, and I do mine. The feeding tube gives me strength. Mykidneys have been ravaged by starvation and dehydration, but they’re not totally destroyed, and once I am able to eat and drink on my own, they come alive, working overtime, flushing my body out. I’ve never had to pee so much in mylife!
    Three weeks after I am discovered half dead, I go to a less intensive floor at the hospital.Aweek after that I am given to social services. One of the policemen who saved me, Lloyd Tafford, becomes my foster dad. While I’m laid up, he prepares his home for me. It’s a small country house a mile outside Sommerville going towards Sacramento, made almost entirely of bricks. He onlyhas about eight years left to payon it.
    The dayI go home with him, Channel 10 comes to cover my story, and everyone in town is there. The sun is out, the sky is a beautiful, pure blue, with cottony clouds. I smell flowers and freshlymowed lawn. I feel like I’ve just been born.
    It’s the first time I’ve ever been in front of a crowd. I’m scared at first, not used to so many eyes on me, wondering what they’re thinking. They call me a hero and I’m embarrassed. “I’m not the hero,” I tell them. “The police are the heroes. I’m not the one who saved somebody’s life.”
    I’m so thankful to Lloyd for adopting me, for giving me a home.
But it’s not easy getting used to a new home, or learning to trust a new parent.After all I’ve been through, I’m afraid. I can’t tell him what I’m afraid of, onlythat I’m afraid. He soon learns that I’m afraid to let him, or anyone, touch me in any way. When Officer Bloom (Lloyd’s partner on the force) comes over, or anyone from town stops by just to talk, I retreat to my new room and resist coming out. It takes a lot of coaxing. When anyone walks toward me to say hello, I become rigid as ice---I can’t help it---my eyes filled with alarm and misgiving. I’m on guard even during sleep, my body curled into a tight ball. For the first few weeks it’s awful, and Lloyd cries at least once a day, not just because his new son is terrified and unresponsive, but because he can’t stop remembering the images from the first dayhe met me.
One night he begins to describe his recollections in detail. “You had big sores on your back from laying there so long. On your ankles where the chains dug into you. When I lifted you off the mattress you were so light…I almost threw up just from how light you were. You were barelythere…”
I wait for him to mention the infections all over myskin or the old scars in myanus, but he doesn’t.
And then he hugs me…and I stiffen as usual. His big body shudders with sobs and something inside