Cereal

When we finally found an entrance back to the surface, Torie had already long stopped chattering and we were just walking along in silence.  Having someone else with me kept away the hallucinations and panic attacks that had plagued me the last time I was in the tunnels.  Torie had stopped sniffling too but hadn’t let go of my hand once.  Pushing aside the metal cover, I looked around and realized that we were indoors.  More specifically, we were in the girls bathroom of the orphanage.  
First helping Torie up and out of the tunnel, I then pulled myself out onto the cold yet reassuring tile floor.  As my eyes complained about being faced with bright fluorescents, my stomach complained about it’s emptiness.  Thinking that there was no way Torie couldn’t be hungry by now either, I reached for his hand again and started for the kitchen.  Torie said nothing but just the fact that his hand wasn’t grasping mine quite as tightly as before told me that he was already feeling more relaxed.  Reaching the kitchen, I prepared two bowls of my favorite cereal- Honey Nut Cheerios.  From the way that Torie’s eyes widened as he saw the box, it seemed like he was a fan of cheerios too.  Just as we were finishing up, I saw Annie rush past the kitchen door obviously looking for someone.  Five seconds later, she reappeared in the doorway.
“Christophe!!!!!!!!!!!!! Where have you been? Are you OK? How’d you get here? Who is that kid?” and eventually getting back to “Where have you been???”
Trying to figure out how to explain the events of the past few days, I ended up just going with “I’ve been in the hospital. But i’m okay now don’t worry.”
“Oh.  Well I guess thats good then.  Sorry to freak out on you but you should probably know that child services came to talk to you a couple hours and insisted on staying until you got back. I told them that I didn’t know where you were but they still wouldn’t leave.  Do you want me to try again”
I sighed.  Child services was known for their horrible timing.  But then again, it’s not like they’re asking to be forced out of their beds at unconventional hours to take care of kids in need either.
“No, I guess I might as well go talk to them now.  This is Torie.  Torie this is Annie, she’s super nice and I’ll be right back.”
Torie nodded, still crunching away at a spoonful of cheerios.  
Walking into the main room, I greeted child services woman that sat awkwardly waiting on one of the beanbags scattered on the floor.  I allowed myself an inner chuckle knowing that Annie probably purposely didn’t tell the poor woman that right down the hall we had a waiting room with magazines and comfortable chairs for when prospective parents came to meet some of the kids.  Looking away to give the woman a chance to maneuver her way into a standing position, I caught Annie smirking in the corner of my eye.  My guess was that Annie had already tried a couple of times to get the woman to leave.
“Hi, my name is Adelind Garber from child services.  Are you Christophe Moreau?”
Extending my hand I responded,
“Yes, I am.  What may I help you with? This late at night I can only assume you’ve got a kid in trouble.”
“Well actually, you’re right.  But there’s something else too.  Is there somewhere we can talk?”
I led her into the waiting room down the hall.  I saw her give Annie a resentful sideways glance upon realizing that she could have avoided the sore back that came with sitting in a beanbag for more than an hour. Sitting down, Adelind pulled a manilla file out of her briefcase.  Opening it, she introduced the child whose whole life apparently filled up only a couple of pages.  Not even front and back.  
“Christophe, this is Torie.”
Glancing closer at the picture paperclipped to the inside of the file, I recognized the dark-skinned, blue-eyed boy that now sat in the kitchen happily munching on cereal.  
“Oh Torie, I know him.  I found him today after he ran away from the hospital.  Are his parents looking for him?”
“Well thats the thing,” Adelind said.  “Torie’s mom, Rosie, died early this afternoon...and you’re his dad.”
In a flash, I realized where I had recognized Torie from- that dream of that little kid holding onto Rosie’s hand.  Thinking back even further, I knew that the baby that must have been wrapped up inside the white bundle had also Torie.  All this seemed to happen in a second.  The next second, I was sprinting back to the kitchen.  It wasn’t a dream.  Torie was still there, now slurping the sweetened milk from his cereal bowl.  Looking up, his eyebrows furrowed at the sight of me panting in the doorway.
“Torie. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
He put the cereal bowl down in confusion.
“Torie. I’m your dad and I want you to know that I will never ever leave you. You got that?”
His eyes widened and his mouth opened but no words came out.  So, I did the best that I could do.  I put my arms around my son and hugged him.  I knew that one hug would never be able to make up for the years that I had missed of his life but still, I hugged him because at least now, I knew that the little lost boy and the tired lost man would never be alone again.

Home

Lying back in my cot, I reflected on my last couple of hours.  Pulling one story after another from my memory, I’d sat with the boy until a nurse came in to take him somewhere- I assumed back to wherever his parents were.  Throughout the whole time we talked, I kept my eyes on his hands.  When he was relaxed, his hands lay flat in his lap but as soon as his hands began to clench and grasp at each other, I knew to quickly change the topic.  For some reason, all I really wanted to do was make this boy’s blue eyes light up and see his face widen into a smile.  The responsible half of my brain kept urging me to ask about why he was in the hospital but it seemed like he was barely holding himself together as it was so the other half of my brain just kept focusing on keeping Torie happy.  Shortly after I’d gotten back to my room Sile had come back to visit- bringing some lunch in a brown paper bag.  Again he made like he’d brought someone else along when it clearly was just him.  This time I was sure enough about my vision to realize that the problem was not with me but with him.  Putting Sile and his hallucinations aside, I turned my thoughts back to Torie.

A nurse walked in just as I was dozing off.  
“Mr. Moreau? How are you feeling”
“Great actually, do you know when I can go home?”
Picking up the clipboard at the end of my cot, the nurse flipped a couple of pages.
“Well it says here that you can head out whenever you feel up to it.  All you have to do is sign a couple of papers.”
A commotion began to rise up in the hallway.  I heard someone shout “Hey kid, wait!” and then the nurse hurriedly unclipped some papers and practically threw them onto the table next to my cot.
“Umm, I’ll just leave the papers here.  Once you complete them you can just go.”
Without a backward glance, she rushed off into the hall to help with whatever was going on.

Feeling a sudden urgency myself, I quickly scanned through the pages and signed at the x’s.  Gathering up my clothes and quick-changing behind a curtain, I stepped into the hallway.  Nurses were running back and forth.  Doors that were closed before were opened- startling sleeping patients and their family members alike.  But as soon as I registered that they were all yelling the name “Torie”, I jumped right into the bustle of people myself.  Knowing that the main areas of the hospital would have already been searched many times over, I headed for the less likely spots.  Mens bathroom.  The stalls were all empty but just as I began to leave, I saw a drain cover askew.
Remembering back to my search for Xiu Li, I pushed cover aside and peered inside.  The drain looked to be plenty big enough for a kid as small as Torie to fit in.  On the other hand, it might be a bit of a squeeze for me.  Glad for the first time in days that I hadn’t exactly been eating heartily recently, I lowered myself down into the tunnels that I had once been desperate to get out of.  All my fears of getting lost in the darkness disappeared in an instant as soon as I saw the quickly fading prints of small kid-sized sneakers in the damp dirt under my own shoes.  Leaving the cover open just in case I needed some rescuing later, I followed the shoe prints deeper into the tunnels.  This time though, I made sure to pay attention to each turn I made, carefully creating a mental map of my general location beneath the town. Either my eyes had grown stronger in the dark or tiny beams of light were somehow making their way into the tunnels, I just knew that I had to keep following the prints in the squishy soil.  Soon, I began to hear footfalls and gave up on my mental map and focused all my attention on the little boy that was probably terrified out of his mind at this point.  Realizing that my own quickly approaching footfalls might be the reason that Torie hadn’t slowed down yet, I began to call out his name.
“Torie, don’t be scared, it’s just me!  Remember how you told me about the ocean and collecting seashells? I can take you back there, but first you gotta stop running so that I can get us outta here!”
I heard the footsteps slow down and finally stop to be replaced by loud, wet sniffling.  I slowed my pace down too and began to trace my fingertips along the side of the tunnel.  In seconds, my long legs brought me at least 2 feet away from the sniffling.  
“Hey Torie, can you see me at all?  If you can, take my hand”
A small hand bumped against my elbow and finally found its way down to my palm.
“You okay? You wanna talk about it?”
“I just wanna go home..”
Recognizing the need to get some answers finally, I said:
“I can do that, but first you gotta tell me about where home is so I know where to take you”
Slowly, with him talking and me listening, I somehow guided us back into the world- a man and a child both just looking for home.