While the gate-keepers turned his briefcase upside down, shaking out the contents onto their desk like bank robbers inspecting their loot, two uniformed orderlies walked past, each guiding a large, worn-out looking Alaskan Huskie by harnesses used by people with guide dogs.

“The dogs have Medicare?” Crump asked one of the orderlies.

“Those are comfort animals,” offered the woman behind the counter. “A local shelter sends them over and the kids play…..” she paused, “….well, not play, more, sort of, they lean on them. I mean, they like the contact.”

“And the fur,” one of the orderlies added.

“Can we see your wallet?” prodded the woman rifling his briefcase.

Crump pulled out his billfold. It was old, chunky, overstuffed with junk and harmless as a loaf of bread. “Here, the exploding wallet,” he said, handing it over.

“I know—seems like overkill, but they use laminated drivers’ licenses and credit cards to cut,” the woman said, as she removed Crump’s license and cards from the wallet, handing it back over. “You’re all set. We’ll hold these. Take the elevator down the hall to the fourth floor. Our attendant Giampetro will meet you when you get off.”

The place had all the dull personality of the check-in boarding counter at a half-way deserted, mid-sized airport, which made the attendant that much more startling. Giampetro was the largest adult human Crump had ever seen. The man was at least seven feet tall, had to weigh three hundred pounds, was bald as an onion and so stooped over that he could have played Quasimodo in the local dinner theater’s production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, although from the looks of him, the director would need to scold him for over-acting.

“You the lawyer?” he asked, from somewhere deep down in his chest, as he slowly bent his head in Crump’s direction, without straightening up.

“Yeah, I’m here to interview the kid from…..uhh…..from….wherever,” Crump responded, since they hadn’t been given the kid’s name or any background by the clinic that had recruited Maureen for this no-pay, volunteer case.

The elevator lobby was institutional-non-descript, except for the locked entry door to the unit, which was mounted with bullet-proof safety glass that distorted the view of the activities on the other side.

“Stand here,” Giampetro ordered, as he slid an I.D. bracelet over a lock pad, and the sliding door whooshed open.

“Holy…Mother…of…God,” Crump let out, as the inside of the Adolescent Psychiatric Ward came into view. Almost all the kids were female, all of them were emaciated-looking, and while a couple were in wheelchairs, most were wandering aimlessly around the unit. It looked like a scene from one of those  old-time horror films, where the young couple move into a haunted house and when they open the attic door, the ghosts of all the prior inhabitants are slowly gliding around, feet barely touching the ground. Crump felt queasy, like if he stared at them too long, he’d be able to see right through the kids. Virtually every child was wearing gauze bandages wrapped around their forearms, covering bony arms from wrist to elbow.

“You haven’t lived ‘till you’ve spent time in a Juvenile Psych Ward,” Giampetro growled, his chin still buried in his chest.

Everywhere Crump looked, teenagers and young kids were bandaged up, the skin on their arms unseen underneath the gauze wraps.

“They like to cut their arms,” Giampetro added. “Some do legs, but it’s mostly arms.” 

Many of them had oblong fanny packs strapped to their waists, with clear plastic tubing running from the packs up to their noses, where the tubes were taped into a single nostril. It looked just like the get-ups he’d seen with old folks who needed oxygen, dragging around inside nursing homes. Every one of them appeared ill, exhausted or just plain wasting away.

“What’s with the oxygen packs? They all former chain smokers?” Crump asked.

“Those are….urrr….feeding tubes,” Giampetro mumbled.

As they entered the ward, one kid wearing cut-off shorts wandered past. Her exposed legs exhibited a pattern of vertical lines full of angry, red, inch-long scabs, covering her thighs from her knees to her shorts.

“Is that what’s under the bandages?” Crump asked, nodding toward the passing kid in cutoffs.

“Pretty much.”

Giampetro led Crump to a kiosk off to the side of the unit. A woman stood behind the counter with a phone to her ear, shaking her head silently. She was blonde-haired, round-faced and so cherubic-looking Crump thought she could have passed for a slightly rattled, all-grown-up former child tap-dancer.  

“This is the lawyer, here for E.M.,” Giampetro announced, as he huffed, then turned and wandered into the ward.

Crump started to speak, but the woman, still holding the phone to her ear, raised a hand to stop him.

“Look, this child has not eaten solid food in three months,” she lectured the person on the other end of the line. “You can’t just yank out a feeding tube and toss her a hamburger,” she argued, frustration rising in her voice. She paused, looking down at a medical chart. “No, we already tried that. She has to stay here until we can get her up to eighty-five percent normal body weight, then we can try initiating a mix of rice and liquids.” She hung up.

“Another insurance company, managing length-of-stay,” she remarked, as she eyed Crump, disapprovingly. Crump wasn’t what she’d expected—too rumpled, collar starting to fray and pill. He looked like he could be almost anybody, maybe the guy driving around the retirees on the motorized luggage cart at the airport. “Sorry. I thought you’d be a woman—”

“My partner got hung up, so she asked me to pinch hit,” he said, as he offered her his business card.

“While we’re happy for any help we can get here, I’m not sure how ‘E.M.’ will react to a man.”

Crump shrugged. “I know. Maureen McDougal can stay involved. I just need to interview the kid if we’re going to file something in court on her behalf. What’s with the initials?”

“They don’t know her name—it’s the I.D. code the Immigration Agents gave her, when they separated her from her parents.”

Crump turned to survey the room. There was so much commotion it was hard to single anybody out, but his eyes fixed on the only male child in sight. The kid was seated cross-legged in a wheelchair, his arms resting listlessly on the armrests, his hands hanging in his lap like all the tendons had been cut. Crump figured him for thirteen or fourteen, but with his head hanging down, it was hard to judge. A man and a woman were seated at either side of the wheelchair, the man with his hand on one of the chair’s push-handles, the woman smoothing a lock of sandy brown hair over the child’s forehead. The kid was all bones and skin, as though if he’d lost another five pounds he’d turn to powder and disappear.

“She’s not in the common room,” the Doctor spoke up, breaking Crump’s train of thought. “We’ve got her sequestered. She’s so intense about not eating she kind of freaks out the other kids,” the Doctor added. She glanced at the business card he’d handed her. “Mr. Crump—”

“Just Crump—nobody but the Social Security Administration calls me ‘Mister’,” Crump said, turning back to face her. “This is all…. just …..I mean…..” He paused, lost for words.

“Never been to an Adolescent Psychiatric Ward, I take it?”

“No. My kids, they eat, and when they got picked on they’d just slug somebody. How did all these kids end up here?”

“Sign of the times, I’m afraid,” she said, glancing around. “Thirty years ago, few places—here included—had separate wards for the kids with mental health issues.” She paused, watching Crump, who pretty obviously wished he was somewhere else.

“So, what happened? Where’d they all come from?” 

“Some of this is from heightened awareness and improved diagnosis, but it’s mostly bullying, harassment that takes place in and around schools, and on the internet.” She stopped, watching Crump observing the revolving malnourishment exhibition. 

“Anyway, I’m doctor Amelia Trimble. E.M. is my patient, and we called Volunteer Legal Services when we got this notice.”

She stopped, flipped some papers over on a chart and handed a one-page form to Crump.

The document, dated October 15, 2022, was a form letter, typed on stationery of The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. It was addressed to “The Parents or Guardians of E. M., a Minor, Currently in Deferred Status”. The pro-forma address was pre-printed with “Dear” and then a blank space where “Parents or Guardians of E. M.” had been superimposed with a crummy, slightly crooked photocopy job.

 It read:

“The child in your custody is currently in deferred status pursuant to 8 U.S. Code 1227, pending deportation during one or more applications of medically-required treatment of a condition which the Secretary of U.S.C.I.S. has determined to be potentially or actually life threatening. You are hereby notified that, due to a recent policy action by U.S.C.I.S., your deferral status has been revoked by the Secretary, retroactive to August 7, 2022. You have 33 calendar days to have E.M. permanently depart the United States, at which time, if E.M. remains in the United States, said E.M. will be deemed illegal status and will face deportation by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Division of the Department of Homeland Security. Questions regarding your child’s status may be directed to the address printed above. Please have your child’s I.C.E. code number, listed at the top of this notice, included in your inquiry.”

Crump handed the letter back to Dr. Trimble. “I went to State Schools, so you’ll need to help me. What happened here?” he asked.

The Doctor glanced at the letter. “Kind of a sick joke, if you want my opinion. We got this thing after this ‘grace’ period had already expired. We tried contacting U.S.C.I.S., then I.C.E., and each time the people we spoke to claimed to know nothing about this change in status, or how to fix it. This is a kid who’s about to get a semi-permanent feeding tube directly attached to her duodenal—”

“I’m sorry?” Crump interrupted.

“Her stomach and intestines—she’s so anorexic she rips out the naso-gastric feeding tube. She’s fourteen and has the body weight of a nine-year old. If she leaves the building, she’s going to die, and the Government’s telling us they’re going to deport her.”

Crump handed back the form letter. “What about the parents? They here legally?”

“We don’t even know who her parents are—that comes with the initials, ‘E. M.’. We’ve been calling her ‘Millie,’ because she won’t tell us her name. We think maybe it’s something the parents warned her not to say.”

Crump was slowly shaking his head, thinking his partner Maureen had stuck it to him again. He was supposed to be planning his retirement and instead, here he was, in this hospital ward full of kids who all seemed to be slowly, painfully disappearing. The case that brought him here—Maureen’s case—involved a kid with no name, no parents and some Federal bureaucracy, about to stomp the kid to death.

Crump was tempted to say, “I think I’m in the wrong building,” but the Doctor looked like she’d haunt him to his grave if he backed out, and then, there was that Giampetro guy…..  

So, he asked, “Where’d she come from and how’d she get here?”

“We don’t know much—only that she was one of those kids the Feds separated from their parents when they crossed the Mexican border. The Stuggs Administration was spouting some baloney about needing to isolate the kids because the border crossings were illegal, so their parents were dangerous criminals. They’d scoot the kids away, bussing them all over the Country in the middle of the night. Millie, E. M., came from a group they had holed up in chicken-wire cages set up in the National Guard Armory, over in Edgewater. Once she got there, she just stopped eating. When she became dangerously anorexic, the staffers brought her here.”

Crump was thinking that if there truly was a God after all, and the only humane aspect of your child-detention program was using chicken-wire cages instead of razor-wire cages, you were probably going to pay for it someday. Without looking up, he injected, “I still don’t get it—then who applied for this, this ‘waiver’, whatever it is, the thing they’re cancelling with this notice? Somebody must have applied to put the kid in this program—”

“I did that,” Doctor Trimble interrupted. “One of the best-kept secrets in the world is that the Doctors and Nurses in Adolescent wards become surrogate parents to these kids. Half of them are bullying victims,  the other half sent here when they’ve been injured or sickened in abuse and neglect situations, placed here by the Juvenile Court. We use something we call ‘Medically Inappropriate Discharge Orders’ to keep the kids in the pediatric hospital wards until it’s safe to let them out.”

Crump nodded—he’d actually seen that game being played by doctors and nurses. “So, the Court—”

“—Or, just as often, the Hospital Administration—” the Doctor interrupted— 

“—they say, ‘She’s cured. Time to send Itsy-Bitsy-Schmitzy back to her folks’, and you guys say, ‘That would be a ‘medically inappropriate discharge,’ and Schmitzy stays here until they come up with something better,” Crump offered, giving his estimation of the somewhat legit, somewhat illigit, institutional scam. 

“Right,” Doctor Trimble acknowledged. “So, the first time a D.H.S. squad showed up asking about Millie, she was in no condition to be moved. I sent them packing with a ‘no-discharge’ order. Then I found out about this Medical Deferral Program on the Internet. I figured if H.H.S. and U.S.C.I.S. had no idea who her real parents were, it’d be none of their business picking apart a deferral application from her surrogate parent. So, I applied, and if anybody asks, the official word is that I did it with no help from the Hospital’s lawyers.”

“Hmmm,” Crump observed, scratching his head. “So, now, the Big Boys in U.S.C.I.S. want to kick her out of the Country?”

“I’m not exaggerating—she’ll die if she’s forced to leave.”

“They can’t be serious about this,” Crump reflected. “I mean, if this really is a ‘policy change’, it’s got to impact hundreds of kids and adults.”

“Try thousands, if you’re talking the whole U.S.A.”

“The publicity alone would hammer the Administration. Even for President ‘The Very Reverend Stuggs’, this is a bone-headed move. Ham-fisted, even for him,” Crump observed.

Dr. Trimble nodded silently, raising an eyebrow in a What-else-is-new? gesture. “They’re going to kill thousands of sick people with this thing, and it’s got nothing to do with protecting the Public. You ask me, this is an act of terrorism. They want the folks in Mexico and Central America who are thinking about heading for the U.S. border to say, ‘My God, they’re going to take my kids away from me, and then, if they get sick, they’re gonna kill ‘em’. President Stuggs and his staffers are hoping this’ll scare them into staying home.”

Crump stepped away, then looked back out into the common room. The ghost kid in the wheelchair was still there, being tended to by his parents. He turned back and asked to see the letter again. “Can you make me a copy of this, this thing?” he asked.

Crump stood at the kiosk while Doctor Trimble disappeared into an office. When the Doctor returned, he asked, “So, you want me to find a way to stop this?”

“Right,” she answered, nodding.

Crump stuffed the copy into his briefcase. “Here’s the problem,” he began. “Because she’s a kid, she can’t personally hire a lawyer, any more than she can open a bank account or go buy a house—no legal capacity to contract. I could represent you folks—the Hospital Corporation—but it’s kind of bloodless. Nobody cares what the clanking machinery of the American Healthcare Delivery System thinks about child welfare. I’ll need to get a guardian appointed to represent her as a person, some adult who can stand in for her and sue the stuffing out of these characters at Immigration Enforcement.”

The Doctor cocked her head. “O.K., I’d do that,“ she offered.

Crump offered a warning. “I feel obligated to tell you that you don’t know what you’re getting into—”

“I do this kind of stuff all the time.”

“O.K., but because she’s fourteen, she gets to pick: A minor gets to nominate her own guardian, something they do so a kid can choose a parent for cases like divorces. That rule applies to all kids, fourteen and over. I’ll need to interview her, and then she needs to sign the guardianship petition. That means I’ll need to ask her who she wants to appoint.”

“You speak Spanish?” Dr. Trimble asked.

“A little…..” Crump paused, then held up his thumb and forefinger like he was fishing for flying objects, “—Un poco. It’s been a while, like high school and college. No hábla Ingles? She speak any English?” 

“’Fraid not, but I can help some. I’m semi-literate. Follow me.”

Doctor Trimble circled the divider and brushed past Crump, leading him into the common room and past the disappearing kid in the wheelchair. “We can change schools.….” Crump heard the child’s mother say, leaning into him in a low, pleading voice.

They filed down a surprisingly darkened hallway and turned into an open room with one bed and one child.

E.M., the teenager they called “Millie”, was sitting on the bed, wearing jeans and a tee shirt, staring into space. There was an I.V. tube running from a drip-bag into a bandage on the top of her left hand. She had long, brown, dull and lusterless hair, parted in the middle and drooping over her face like she was hiding, peeking out to see if the coast was clear. She looked like a cross between the kids’ images Crump had seen pasted on the sides of milk cartons, announcing they’d been abducted, and the quarter profile pictures in high school yearbooks, those fourteen-year-olds staring off into nowhere.

Dr. Trimble spoke first. “Tú tiene un visitante,” she announced. “You have a visitor,” Dr. Trimble whispered to Crump, not certain he could follow.

The kid didn’t move. Crump could barely hear her when she replied, “¿Ha visto a mi madre?”

“I look like her Mother?” Crump whispered to the Doctor.

“You are pretty rusty,“ Dr. Trimble whispered back. “She’s asking if you’ve seen her Mother.”

Crump realized, just like that, they were at a fork in the road. The kid looked half dead already, her image, classic nightmare fodder for the rest of his life. He figured he could play it straight, get a simple consent and dump the case back on his partner Maureen when she returned, or he could stick his nose into it and almost certainly blow it up. While he was tired down into his bones, daydreaming for hours some days about retirement, there was this thing about a kid searching for her mother that nibbled at a small, dying chunk of his brain that barely remembered the mother he’d lost, the one who’d abandoned him as a seven-year-old kid in a crowded movie theater……

“Sí—” he began, when the Doctor jumped in.

“Yes?” Dr. Trimble asked, startled and thinking, What’s going on here?

“Está….uuhh…..preocupada por ti,” Crump added. Almost to reassure himself that he got it right, he translated, “She’s worried about you.”

Dr. Trimble shot Crump an angry dagger stare, then grabbed his elbow and yanked him out of the room, closing the door behind them.

“What the Hell are you doing?” she began, her arms crossed. “You’re lying to that child—”

“Yes, I am. If you have a better idea, let me know, otherwise, let me do this.”

“I don’t think this is ethical—“

“You’re absolutely right, and before we leave, I’ll give you the number of the Disciplinary Commission, and you can report me and ask them to tag my otherwise worthless law license, but if you want this kid to live long enough for me to sort this out, she’s going to need to start eating. She looks like if you put a feeding tube in her belly, it’s gonna come out the other side. There’s nothing left in between.”

Doctor Trimble was practically sputtering. “Look, if you build up that kid’s expectations, she’s just going to sink deeper into depression,” she complained, her head almost vibrating.

Crump raised his shoulders. “Then, I guess I’m just gonna have to find her Mother,” he said, as he walked out to the common room and retrieved his briefcase. He took out a stack of forms. “I need to start with getting you appointed her guardian, so I can sue the Federal Government on her behalf. First, we need to stop this deportation thing, then, when that’s on hold, I’ll try to figure out what they did with Mom.”

“I’ve already asked. The U.S.C.I.S. people say they have no idea.”

“You asked politely, all doctorly. I’m gonna stick a court order up somebody’s….uuhh…..” He paused. ”Well, you get the idea. Now, you sign here,” he said, setting the form against his briefcase.

“We take all the pens away—pens can be used for self-harm. I’ll need to go grab one from lock up.”

When she returned, they re-entered the child’s room. There was a marked change in the kid’s demeanor. She was sitting up, looking at them as they entered.

Good, Crump thought. Momentarily forgetting the language barrier, he announced, “I’ll need you to sign these forms, so you ask the Doctor here to be your helper. Then, the Doctor and I can bring your Mother back here.”

Doctor Trimble interrupted with the Spanish translation, followed with, “¿Puedes escribir su nombre, tu verdadero nombre?”

Crump flattened the stack of forms on the end of the bed and handed the pen to the child U.S.C.I.S. was calling, “E. M.”. Doctor Trimble whispered, “I asked her if she could write her real name on the form.”

As they both watched in anticipation, the kid took the pen. At first, she fumbled with it, gripping it awkwardly, using coordination she hadn’t mustered in months. Then, with a determination that almost punctured the stack of forms underneath the paper, she methodically wrote, “Estrellita Montes,” in a kid’s fractured version of cursive and printing. She handed the stack of documents to Crump, holding it up with the hand attached to the I.V. drip.

Crump took the forms. “Tell her, we need to make a deal. Tell her, if I’m gonna go find her Madre, then she’s gotta let you do the nose tube, then, as soon as she can take it, she’s gotta go back to eating. Tell her, otherwise, No Deal.”

Doctor Trimble escorted him back into the hallway. “You can’t negotiate with this child, she’s barely alive….” She paused, wondering just where the Volunteer Legal Clinic found this reckless cowboy.

“You got a better idea?” Crump asked.

Doctor Trimble was shaking her head, rolling her eyes upward. “I just hope you’re serious about this,” she said.

“I wasn’t, when I came in. I was just kicking the can down the road until my partner could get her butt down here.” He stopped, held up the form for her to glimpse the signature. “You see her name? ‘Estrellita Montes’—or, if you’re a Fed-paper-pusher, ‘E.M.’. Those bastards know her real name. This is essentially a Government kidnapping.”

The doctor went back in, Crump in tow. She translated Crump’s proposed bargain. 

Estrellita slowly nodded.

“Bueno,” Crump offered, smiling. He couldn’t think of anything else to do, so he offered her his hand, and, remarkably, she shook on it.

When they went back into the common room and Crump packed up, the disappearing wheelchair boy was still there, his parents looking confounded as they tried to console him.

Crump stopped. Looking at the kid was painful. Taking in the entire ward was torture. Somebody was bullying these people, bullying some of them literally to death. The scene was brain poison to Crump, who, after forty-four years as a lawyer, could only muster one thought: There was no way this was all happening without somebody breaking the law.

He walked up to the three helpless-looking victims of something. They all looked up.

“What happened to you?” he asked the kid. The boy looked at Crump, silently. His parents seemed alarmed. The Father started to rise, when Crump smiled and added, “You were supposed to say, ‘You should have seen the other guy’.”

By now the Father was standing, about to ask Crump just what he was doing, invading their space.

“Something bad happened here.” He paused. “I’m a lawyer,” Crump announced, holding out a business card for the Parents to take. “Call me.”