“We never finished any formal assessment, but here’s the preliminary information from a pediatrician who assessed Gabriel. He lists it all in there, but basically he notes a serious developmental delay, an inability to establish and maintain relationships with his peers, a serious delay in language development. He plays by himself, gets agitated, and screams in fits, and his foster parents were unable to comfort him. We can only assume how long the mother’s ignored this.” Hank Walker, the social worker, handed the manila envelope to Andy.
“You take a child away from his mother and stick him with a bunch of strangers in some shack that’s barely livable, with how many other kids in the system, locking him in a bedroom—all that behavior sounds pretty normal to me.” Andy was barely able to co
