An Empty Bed...

I can't sleep tonight. I am tired, but my mind is going too fast. I worked monday prenatals today. That is initial prenatal day, all the girls coming to mercy for the first time. It is NOT a coveted shift. I found myself marching over, doppler in hand this morning at 7:30, picking my way through the crowds of pregnant women, their husbands, and little children. It is not unusual for companions to come to monday prenatals. Usually little kids and their dads line the hall waiting for their wives/mothers to come downstairs. It's not unusual for older little kids (4 and above) to be sitting downstairs on the bench by themselves while their mom is upstairs. No kids or husbands allowed upstairs. Today was no exception. There was a little boy downstairs today, his mother was number 6. They got there early, so that she could try to have her baby at mercy. When she finished her business upstairs she came down expecting to find her 5 year old boy waiting for her, where she had left him. But he was not there. And he wasn't outside the gate either, and he wasn't anywhere on the street. She came back and asked the guard if he had seen him... but in the commotion the quiet little boy was missed. They looked up and down the street, asking people, but nobody knew. Where is this guy? What happened to him? It would be crazy easy for him to have wandered off, getting lost in the big city when he lives about 1 hour away. He's never been here before. It would have been easy for him to follow the wrong "mama" home. It would have been easy for someone to have come in and taken him to do who knows what with. It would be easy for him to be overlooked, lost wandering the streets, with all the street kids around. I'm praying for him tonight, he's probably scared. But I am praying he is safe, in a warm bed, somewhere with someone who is looking after him, and who will bring him back to Mercy tomorrow to his worried mama. I'm praying for his mother, who has been back and forth today looking for her son. Who is at home now, an incomplete home, staring at his empty bed...