Published: 24 May 2021

From the end of The Kimble:

We had a GREAT honeymoon in Ogunquit and we told Phil that we hoped to come back often. We had sent copies of our marriage certificate to the caseworker at the DCFS before we had left for our honeymoon, but we were somewhat surprised to find a message on our home machine when we arrived back in Springfield a week later. Our caseworker explained he had a favor to ask of us, and it involved a 9-year-old boy who had been orphaned the week before our wedding…

The 9-year-old boy was named Joseph Allen Richter, and he was just about the cutest kid you ever did see. He had light auburn hair that lit up with reddish streaks in the sunlight, a scattering of freckles under his eyes and across his nose. His ears seemed a bit big compared to his face, but he would eventually grow into them. The three of us sure did hit it off the first time Chris, and I met him; the same night, we had gotten the message left on our phone the day we returned from our honeymoon.

The following Friday evening, we had our first home visit. We had all agreed that Joey would not be allowed anywhere off the patio outside the condo Chris, and I had created out of the old office space on the roof of The Kimball. Just in case, I had a chain-link fence erected in front of the three-foot-high balustrade around the top of the exterior walls of the roof, at least on the leg of the U our penthouse sat upon. Surprisingly, after a while we didn’t even notice it anymore, it certainly did not interfere with our sunsets and sunrises, or our views of downtown, but the fence made me a lot more comfortable about Joey and Lucky playing out there, Chris, too.

Joey hadn’t ridden much in an elevator before, and he giggled that kid’s giggle as we took off from the lower lobby to the 8th floor and then walked around to the fire escape stairwell and took the now refurbished wooden staircase up another floor to the rooftop. He was awed at our rooftop residence. We had outfitted one of the guest rooms with bunk beds and a student desk. There was also a large bookcase that held a TV and a VCR so he could watch privately if he wanted, or if we had guests or work to finish up at home without interruptions. That rarely happened, but we occasionally had something that needed our undivided attention for part of an evening or two during prep for tax season.

With it being the summer, we didn’t have to worry about school for Joey right away, but there was an excellent elementary school just three blocks further from the downtown area the Kimball was in. That summer was good for all of us. He began to go to the gym with us, and he even went on our neighborhood runs with us, usually holding onto Lucky’s leash. No, he couldn’t keep the same pace we did. However, Chris and I would jog to the end of the block and then turn around and rejoin Joey and Lucky, so Chris and I actually doubled the distance we covered by doing this repeatedly for each of the twenty blocks we covered, every other day on the days we did not go to the gym.

While Chris and I worked out, Joey was enrolled in a swimming class at the gym, and soon that led to him taking the next step; he graduated to the diving class by the end of the summer. His three weekend visits with us went better than anyone could have expected, and after the third visit, he was placed in our care as his permanent foster dads. We had talked this over between ourselves and our friends. We were determined that Joey would eventually become our adopted son, most likely before the end of the year. That would be after his therapy sessions he was attending ended, to deal with the deaths of his birth parents in the tragic car accident they had been involved in just before Chris and I married.

On the day of his last appointment, Chris and I both went with him, instead of just one of us. Joey’s counselor invited all three of us into his office, and Chris and I sat on the loveseat in the sitting area. Joey was snuggled in between the two of us as his therapist sat in a single chair across from us, and he smiled as he saw what Joey had done, and one of each of our arms around his shoulders. He asked Joey if he was comfortable where he was, indicating another single chair, but Joey said he was alright just where he was. Again, his therapist smiled, and then proceeded to tell us that he thought Joey had done very well in accepting the loss of his mother and father and that he liked living with Lucky and us very much. Taking Chris and me by surprise a bit, he asked us what our intentions were toward Joey. I spoke up and told him that as soon as Joey felt comfortable, we were prepared to adopt him, to take on the responsibilities of raising him to adulthood and making sure he went on to college if that was what he wanted to do. Chris spoke up and related how we had already started a trust fund for Joey’s use to pay for his college or specialty training after high school. Joey just smiled and snuggled in between us even tighter.

The therapist informed us that Joey’s formal sessions with him had been very successful but should either one of the three of us thought another session was needed, all we had to do was to call; and he’d make time to see Joey again. But as of now he thought we all were doing great, and he wished us all a great holiday season, as it was then just a week from Thanksgiving.

Our caseworker over at the DCFS facility called the next evening, and told us that the report from Joey’s therapist had arrived that day. He and his boss were thrilled that the report was very positive and supportive of us adopting Joey. We told him that our lawyer, the one that Ted, and Irma Theopolous used for their businesses, had already filed our petition to adopt with the family court here in Springfield and that we were just waiting for a court date. He said to please keep him in the loop because he wanted to be there for the three of us on our special day.

That day came sooner than we had expected. I received a call in my office the next day at work, and our lawyer said she was just as surprised as we were that we had been summoned to court on the following Tuesday, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and just a bit less than a week from now. She suggested that we not tell Joey right away, as that would add unnecessary stress to him. I said that we would wait until the late morning of Tuesday to tell him, as our appointed time was 2 PM, the last hearing before the court broke up for their long holiday break. She also said that with the DCFS and Joey’s therapist’s recommendations we shouldn’t have anything to worry about at the hearing.

She was right, we entered the courtroom with Irma and Ted with us, and it was then that Ted whispered to us that this was going to be a piece of cake, as the judge assigned to us was his first cousin. With all the support from our friends and the great reports from the DCFS, and Joey’s therapist, the hearing was a very routine one until the end. It was then that the judge asked Joey if he wanted to add our last name to his. Chris and I had used his last name as our middle names when we married and my last name as our last names, so Chris was “Christopher Edwards Dunn,” and I was “Felix Edwards Dunn”. Joey giggled and told the judge he would like that a lot, even if his initials would then spell out “Jared,” Joseph Allen Richter Edwards Dunn. There was a chuckle shared with the entire hearing room when the judge proclaimed it to be so from this day forward and sealed it with a rap of his gavel on his benchtop.

We all had our picture taken with the judge, and Joey held the gavel in those pictures, with a great big smile on his face. We made it back to the Kimball just about 4:30 PM, and there was a big party being held for us in the formal dining room just off the lower lobby, Ted and Irma’s present to Joey for his adoption. Since that room was not open to the public until 6, we had a really nice celebration for Joey with all our co-workers and some of the residents, and our friends, so we had about 65 guests to cheer Joey on his new status as our son.

When we finally got to our home on the rooftop, Lucky was waiting inside the front door, eager for some playtime with his boy. Joey grabbed the bag of dog food in the pantry and first fed Lucky, and then he had changed into play clothes and was ready to toss Lucky’s tennis ball for him out on the patio.

The next day I walked Joey to school, and at the school’s office, I registered Joey’s new name, and then Joey went to his classroom. I then returned to the Kimball to begin my workday. Chris stopped in at my office about a half-hour later and asked how it had gone. I assured him that everything went well and that the school secretary and the vice principal offered their congratulations (Chris couldn’t go with us as he had a big staff meeting for his department that morning).

Everything settled into a comfortable routine after our Thanksgiving Day, spent with Ted and Irma and Ted’s mother, Celeste, who still lived in Chris’s old condo on the 4th floor. Joey was almost overwhelmed by all the attention. However, he accepted all the attention from his surrogate grandparents and great-grandmother seriously and with gratitude. The week before Christmas that year, we saw a considerable increase in business at Ted and Irma’s businesses at the Kimball. Christmas parties, weddings, and end-of-the-year visits from local, state, and national elected officials were common occurrences. The staff was impeccably trained and dealt well with the nervous brides, the business managers who needed to add to the Christmas party reservations, and the groups getting visits from all those politicians.

On the Tuesday just before New Year’s Eve, Ted asked me if he could talk to Chris and me for a few minutes after we had our usual staff meeting before this most important night for all of us at the Kimball’s outlets. When the only people left were Chris, me, Ted, and Irma, Ted asked us if we could possibly make space in our rooftop home for a guest for about three hours on New Year’s Eve, say from 6 to 9 that evening. He explained that he knew we were starting work at 6 that evening, me acting as the cashier for the function rooms, the pub, and the main restaurant, just as I had done for the previous years, and that Chris would act as the “floorwalker” security there on the lower level, patrolling the pub and the main restaurant and keeping drunks out of the property, along with some additional security Ted had hired for the night. (I had wondered why Ted had added the extra security for that night, but I was soon to find out that the security was not hired, it was due to the guest due that evening for the group that had rented the ballroom for the night).

Ted explained that the guest that the Valley Press Club had invited was the President, and he had accepted their invitation and was flying up from the DC. area late in the afternoon. He would need about three hours to rest and change, and go over his prepared speech to the press association, thus Ted’s request to use our home. Chris and I knew the Press Club had invited President Carter to speak, never really expecting him to do so, but he accepted, and now we were being asked to let the President of the United States use our rooftop home while he was in our city. Ted told us we could not tell a soul about this until after the President had returned that night to DC, but he would try and get us a chance to meet him in person. We were supporters of President Carter, and to be honest, we were honored to be asked to provide a safe place for him before his appearance at the Press Club function.

The visit might have been being kept under wraps, so to speak, but the Secret Service detail, assigned to prepare for the President’s visit actually arrived the very next morning. We found out they had been in town for two days already. Scouting routes for the caravan the President would be traveling in, from the airbase at Westover AFB over in Chicopee, a short drive on the highway, and then into Springfield and to The Kimball. Of course, there had to be routes mapped out to hospitals, safe areas, and other places along their routes. They showed up to check out what security measures they would have to take while the President was here in the building, checking out the path he would have to take into the building. How he would get from one place to another in the building, and how they would get him out of the building once his speech was over, and back to his plane parked at the Air Force Base.

Ted had called Chris and me and asked if we would come down to meet the six agents that would be involved with guarding the President in our home. We met each agent, and so did Joey, as we couldn’t very well leave him alone at home. When the agents asked to see our home, Joey started to lead these guys to the elevator himself, I guess he did not really need Chris and me for this, but we did trail along, answering the two agents that were lagging behind us, until we got to the elevators, and Joey asked what took us guys so long. Everyone chuckled at that, and when we reached the 8th floor, Joey led us through the corridors to the wooden staircase in the fire escape stairwell that led up to our home.

Joey led two of the agents on a tour as Chris and I led the others on a tour of the rooftop and the patio surrounding our home. Then we switched places, so each group had a tour of the entire space, both inside and outside of our home. Both groups seemed very impressed, and they had questions for us after the tours were completed. Ted had told us to take our time, so we gave them a visual tour through photos we had taken before the renovations, during the process of renovation, and photos of the completed job after we had moved in, and after Joey joined us as our foster son, and then as our adopted son, reducing our guest rooms from 2 to one, the one the President would use. However, Joey said it would be alright if he wanted to use his room!!

The agents had a good chuckle about that, but assured Joey it would be better if the President used the guest room for the short time he would be here. Joey would be spending the evening of New Year’s Eve with Celeste, but both of them would come down to the main restaurant to have dinner with Ted, Irene, Chris, and me. Then they would spend some time in the cashier’s booth with me until the closing of the public rooms at eleven; we made sure each year that the pub and dining room were closed an hour before midnight on holidays, it gave the staff time to get home a bit more safely.

On New Year’s Eve, we dropped off Joey at Celeste’s condo, after turning ours over to the Secret Service agents. Joey was excited to be spending time with Celeste and then escorting her to join us for dinner in an hour or two. We were just exiting the elevator on the lower lobby floor when we were approached by two Secret Service agents who asked us to escort them to the upper lobby, the old main lobby where we had been married, and which fronted on the street across from the triangular park where Chris and I had started “courting” those six or seven years ago. It was pretty quiet down there on the pub and main restaurant level, so we agreed, showing the agents into the elevator, and we went up to the next level, which was the lobby of the old hotel.

Once there, we saw Ted and Irene and a couple of other agents, apparently waiting for the President’s arrival. We talked for only a few moments before the agents all became a bit more alert and Ted unlocked the massive front doors, and four agents exited and when the second limo had pulled up to the front and then left room for the limo behind it to park directly in front of the stairs. Agents appeared out of the front limo, and more from the third limo in line, and the agents lined up to create a corridor for the President to walk from the back seat of the second limo right across the sidewalk and up the stairs to the grand front doors of The Kimball, where inside the agents still with us lined Ted and Irene and Chris and I up on one side of the entry, explaining that we would be introduced to the President before they escorted him to our rooftop home to rest and prepare his speech to the Press Club in a couple of hours.

The President was very cordial to each of us upon his introduction to us. Then six of the agents escorted him to the bank of elevators where he was whisked up to the 8th floor, and the four of us returned to our duties on the lower-level lobby. Ted then made sure the old front doors were secured again. We were told later that the President loved our home and got to see an incredible sunset over the city rooftops. He had even asked some of the twenty or so agents stationed on the rooftop to join him inside a few at a time to partake of the buffet that Irene had arranged in our kitchen for them all to nibble on while waiting for the President to give his speech down in the ballroom.

I knew from some of the waitstaff when the speech was to start. But about twenty minutes before they expected the President to be on his way to the ballroom, Chris, Joey, Celeste, and I received a visitor at the cashier’s booth down on the lower lobby. President Carter wanted to extend his gratitude to us for allowing him to use our home. That included the wonderful food that had been left for him and his agents to partake in. After a few moments of idle chatter, he was then escorted by his detail to make his way to the ballroom to give his speech and then be escorted to the limos waiting out in the parking lot for his short trip back to Westover AFB for his flight back to Washington.

Joey asked us if that was really the President, and we told him it was; he told us that he was a lot shorter than he was on the TV. When we arrived back upstairs, we found the place cleaned and all the leftovers packed and labeled in our kitchen fridge; even the guest room bath had been cleaned. Of course, the next day, there was mention on the front page of the local newspaper of the President’s visit and the fact he had addressed the Valley Press Club at the Kimball the night before. The fact that he had spent a few hours in our home was not fully explained, only that a local family had hosted the President for three hours before he gave his speech.

We all settled into our everyday routines after the holiday break, Chris and I returned to our office routines, and Joey returned to school to finish his year three studies. His assimilation into the school was going well, and he seemed to thrive on his studies. We had added a student desk to our home office, and before, and sometimes after, dinner, he would be working on his homework as Chris, and I worked on getting everything on our accounting books ready for tax season.

During pleasant weather Lucky would often spend time out in his kennel, which was just beyond the entry room, just off the patio there. It had a six-foot fence on the sides and a doghouse shelter at the far end. The narrow end, near the outer door of the entry room, held a three-foot-wide gate that had the same chain-link fence center that the side and end walls were constructed of, as well as the six-foot-high protective fence that surrounded our rooftop.

Yes, that was a direct result of that horrible nightmare that I had about Lucky and Chris toppling off the roof while playing catch with a tennis ball. One of the things we had to do to get an occupancy permit was to get the original fire escape that ran from the rooftop to the rear of the building, now the parking lot, up to code, now that the roof was to be occupied. There was an access to this fire escape from each of the floors of the apartment and the condos, as well as the ballroom floor and the floor with the meeting and function rooms. As well as the floor that had the rented offices. The very last section of stairs to the ground were on springed hinges, so they were upright until pushed down to allow access to the ground. Ted ended up paying 90% of the cost of this, and we paid 10%.

School was out for Joey for the year at the end of May, and the second of June he would have his 10th birthday, which we celebrated by having a big party for him, which included his adult friends from The Kimball, but also about twelve of his friends from school. With our employee discount and a generous gift from Ted and Irma, we barely had to pay for the birthday balloons!! Without having any classmates in our immediate neighborhood, Joey was in his element, getting to give a tour to his friends from his classroom. Just about every place in the building was open to him today, of course not the apartments and the condos, but the meeting rooms not in use, the ballroom, the historic Lobby, the restaurant, and the Pub, not to mention the kitchens where trays of snacks were waiting for the tour. I followed along on the tour and proudly let them get a view of the offices both Chris and I worked in. I was able to answer the many questions asked and was feeling pretty good about that.

We took them from floor to floor by elevator and when it was only one floor to our next stop, we used the old fancy public staircases that echoed as we traveled up or down the very wide stone and metal staircases. There was one boy that Joey seemed to spend a lot of time with, and I learned that this was his bestest friend, Tommy, who lived seven blocks away from us with his single father. I related this to Chris when the tour was over, and the kids were having their evening meal with everyone else out on the patio. We agreed to try to get to know this Single Dad and try to work out with him a way for the two boys to see each other during the summer.

About two hours after dinner and the present openings were over, parents were arriving to pick up their kids, and we watched Tommy. We approached them as Tommy, and Joey were talking to the single man about our own ages, Tommy relating almost the whole afternoon and Joey adding more information, which Tommy’s father seemed to find very interesting and amusing. Joey proudly introduced us to Mr. Wilkins, who shook our hands and asked us to call him Tom; yes, his son was Tom Jr. He stayed for a while, talking to us, and we learned his wife had passed from breast cancer four years ago. He was an employment counselor at one of the big new hotels in the downtown district, and an active member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard.

We found out that for the last several years, he had relied on his mother to take care of Tom Jr. while he was away on training assignments for work, or his weekend duties at the Guard, and for the months of July and August if he was called up for duty, but this year his Mom couldn’t watch Tom because she was away in Arizona taking care of her older widowed sister who lived alone in the home she had lived in with her late husband. She was gradually recovering from a stroke, and Tom’s mother felt she was needed there too.

Chris mentioned as we were cleaning up that he thought we might entertain the idea of watching Tom Jr, for Tom Sr. this year, as having Tom Jr. around for the summer would certainly help our own son out, and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Joey knew the rules, no cooking while we were at work, no playing outside the fence around the rooftops, no talking to strangers in the hallways, and staying on the eighth floor unless coming to one of his Dad’s offices. He’d have a friend to talk to and play games with, not just Lucky, who was a good listener, but not much of a conversationalist. We had been thinking of signing up Joey for the summer program for grade school students at the “Y”, so we could put up Tommy while his Dad was out of town, and they would be able to go to the summer camp during the weekdays while Chris and I worked.

We called Tom Sr. at his work the next day and made our proposal, and he said that he thought it all sounded good to him, but he’d stop by with Tommy this evening to get more details before giving us his final answer. We invited them to have dinner with us. We just knew he liked the idea, but he was going to check us out, most likely with Ted or Irma, our bosses and close friends, and maybe some of the other parents he knew from the other evening. As Chris said, we would have been doing the same thing if the situation had been reversed.

I guess we checked out pretty well, because the first thing that Tom said to us, after Tommy and Joey ran to play a game in Joey’s room as we adults grabbed a seat in the living room, was he hoped he wasn’t taking advantage of our generosity. Still, he would like to take us up on our offer to take care of Tommy while he had Guard duty this summer. He had drawn out on a wall calendar what weekends he would be in training the month of July, and virtually the whole month of August when his regiment would be stationed out of state, they knew not where as of yet.

When dinner was over, we told the boys, and I explained that Tommy could use the guest bedroom or share the bunk bed in Joey’s room, but only if they settled down in there at night and slept. This summer was not to be an all-night gab session between the two of them. Tom agreed and said so, and the boys decided to try “bunking in” with each other in Joey’s room. To keep things all on the up and up, we had our lawyer draw up guardianship papers that Chris and I signed just below where Tom Sr. had.

The two ten-year-olds got along great together that first month, just the weekends, with Tom being at reserve training for all 4 of those weekends. Then came the month of August, and Tom’s Air Reserve squad was stationed at one of those old Air Force training bases out in the desert in New Mexico to train new cadets in all things about flying and maintaining bomber aircraft.

The second week we had a disturbing and very unsettling phone call from the base commander out there. It seems that Tom’s squad had taken up a few new recruits and the young man training to fly the plane was at the controls and somehow opened the rear hatch of the B52 style plane without telling the rest of the crew, and the aircraft was not pressurized enough, and the entire crew of seven was sucked out the rear of the plane which then crashed to the desert below. There were no survivors, and Tom had been among the dead recovered.

The Colonel who called us had already gone to Tom’s aunt’s house to convey the news to Tom’s mother and aunt, but both ladies had taken the news very badly, in fact, his aunt had another stroke, and his mother had a severe heart attack, and she was deceased now, also; his aunt was not expected to survive her latest stroke. Now the hard part, we had to tell Tommy that his Dad was dead.

Tommy’s first question had been if his Dad’s plane had been shot down. We explained that there had been an accident on the plane and that it had crashed, and that his grandmother and his aunt were not able to care for him as they were both very ill (we had decided to ease into his grandmother’s death, coming so soon after his father’s). Chris saw what he thought was a very scared look come across Tommy’s face, and immediately told him that we thought we would ask him if he wanted to stay here with Joey and us, and Lucky. He immediately got this sort of happy/sad look upon his face and asked if he really could stay with us, and we both assured him we would try to make it permanent as soon as we could. Of course, we had included Joey in this talk, and he had put his arm around Tommy right away as we were telling him about his father. Tommy perked right up when we told him that he’d most likely be staying with us, as his father had told us that the two of them had no other relatives. Now that the elderly ladies were no longer with us, Tommy, with the aid of the custody agreement his father had signed, and our willingness to take him in, we figured we would be granted full custody of him in court.

As Chris and I prepared our evening meal, the boys went to Joey’s bedroom. I occasionally went to their door to listen, and some of the terms and phrases I heard Joey using as he spoke to Tommy sounded to me like he might be repeating some things his therapist had said to him after his own birth parents’ deaths. I told Chris that we should make sure that Tommy got some sessions with the therapist that had treated Joey when he first started staying with us.

That same day we began the process to make Tommy a part of our household. We contacted the lawyer that helped us with our adoption of Joey, faxing her a copy of the custody agreement we had filled out for Tom Sr., before he had left for Arizona. We notified the police and the caseworker at DCFS that had been Joey’s caseworker, and soon our lawyer had our custody agreement before a family court judge. He made our custody of Tommy permanent. Now we had a second boy to parent.

We offered Tom his own room, but the boys insisted we just take the top bunk off the bunk bed and make two twin beds out of the bunk bed. Thankfully it was designed to do so, so we did. Our two ten- year-olds now had a bed, each in their room. We didn’t have any trouble getting Tom’s belongings out of his old apartment; in fact, Tom now owned everything in it, and we made room for the things he wanted to keep, which included many of his father’s personal possessions. The furniture there was sold, and the money gained from that sale joined the funds from his father’s life insurance in a trust for Tom’s education.

The boys returned to school in late August, and they couldn’t wait to tell all their friends that they were now brothers. Tommy did see the therapist a few times before school started, and continued to see him once a week until just before Thanksgiving. His last appointment was treated as a family conciliating session, and we all attended. After that session was over, the therapist deemed us all well-adjusted to our new circumstances and wished our family a happy holiday season, telling us to call if we needed him for any reason during the holidays or after.

Chris and I had a lot of help with our Thanksgiving dinner preparations. With two ten-year-olds in the house, we had a lot of help eating it too!! Of course, we spent time with the boy’s surrogate grandparents and their surrogate great-grandmother too, but the boys really did like Ted and Irma, and Irma’s mother Celeste, and we all had a great time visiting with them. The boys were back to school the Monday after the holiday, and Chris and I were back in our offices then too.

We settled back into our usual routines very well, Joey and Tom going to school during the week and Chris and I working in our offices for Ted. The weekend before Christmas, which was on a Thursday that year, we took the boys Christmas shopping for the gifts they wanted to give. They were on the winter break from school now and didn’t have to go back until the fifth of January in the new year. Joey went with Chris, and Tom stuck with me while we shopped at the mall in Enfield as the other two went to the big mall in Holyoke. Tom had specific things in mind, and we had an easy time finding all the items on his list. We actually finished his shopping with plenty of time to spare, even counting the time we took to eat at the Enfield Mall’s food court. We decided to head home where we could wrap the gifts he had picked out.

Have you ever tried to teach a 10-year-old how to wrap a present? Let me tell you; it was a lot of fun. Tom has a great sense of humor, and even some of his wrapping ideas were clever. He used strips of cardboard to disguise the shapes of his presents as he wrapped them. Once done, he had an assortment of different shaped packages that would totally confound whoever tried to guess what was wrapped inside those weird, shaped packages. Once finished, he took Lucky out on the patio to play, and he bundled up pretty well to do so. It was cold out, but being on the rooftop, we had the wind’s added factor, which dropped the temperature down another 10 degrees.

He had only been out there with Lucky for about fifteen minutes when he came back in calling for me. “Felix, Felix, there is someone asleep out there!!” I asked if he meant out on the patio, or the rooftop, and he told me that the person was on the fire escape landing, one floor down. I grabbed my coat, and we went out where Lucky was standing at the top of the fire escape ladder, which had a gate to keep him from going down the stairs (or to keep any unwanted guests from reaching our rooftop). Once I saw that there was indeed a body on the lower landing, I asked Tom to put Lucky in his pen and to call Ted on the phone and have him meet me on the 8th-floor landing of the outside fire escape. I opened up the gate and climbed down the ladder to the landing below.

The body was a young woman, breathing, but not very responsive, and very pregnant. Ted arrived out the 8th-floor hall window to join me, and we both felt a pulse and Ted rushed back inside to call for the paramedics. Tom had rejoined me, and we only had to wait for a few minutes for the ambulance to arrive as they were stationed only a few blocks away. They got her on a stretcher, and with both of them working, they got her down the outdoor metal staircase down to the ambulance, and they were off to the hospital, about 12 blocks away.

Tom, Ted, and I were off in a flash to follow the ambulance through our neighborhood to the hospital. We arrived inside just after the paramedics had transferred the patient to a hospital gurney. They were off in a minute, and Ted was speaking with the duty nurse at the check-in counter. We heard him telling her about how she was found outdoors in close to 30-degree temperatures, but elevated on a metal fire escape on the 8th-floor of his building. The nurse assured him that they had detected a fetal heartbeat and that the baby seemed fine for now, but that the doctor in charge was going to try and get the woman/girl’s temperature up a bit because she was apparently hypothermic, meaning she had a very low temperature. She explained that a policewoman was going through her purse and a travel bag that was with her when we found her. If we would just take a seat in the waiting area, she would see to it that we were kept informed of any developments.

About an hour later, as I was at the payphone in the corner of the waiting room, explaining all this to Chris, who was now home with Joey, their shopping was done. The desk nurse, followed by the policewoman, came into the room and indicated she had some news for us. Chris told me they would be here in minutes, and we hung up. The nurse introduced us to the policewoman, saying she also wanted to fill us in on what they had learned.

The girl we had found on the fire escape was now in labor, her body temperature was closer to normal for her condition, and she was going through a natural birthing process. She had climbed the fire escape, intending to jump off and kill herself after she had been told earlier in the day that her boyfriend had been killed in a road accident while at work delivering produce to local restaurants for a food vendor. She was out of work due to the pregnancy, and they had no savings or insurance.

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