Together Forever - (Station 19 fanfic)

SELECTION

Maya's POV :

This morning, we all woke up and got ready to adopt a new child. Bianca seemed excited and I was happy she wasn't feeling like we didn't love her anymore, because it was not true. She was still going to be our baby girl.

Carina drove us to the CPS office where we had to meet a social worker, hopefully not the man who took care of Bianca's file.

Entering it, a middle-aged woman shook our hand. "I'm Janet, we spoke on the phone." She said referring to the day we decided to adopt a child in need. We followed her along the building and sat in her office, Bianca between my wife and I.

"So here how we are going to proceed. I will give you a tablet with all the children that are registered in our system. You can add filters for the age, the gender, the location... It's pretty simple to use." She said handing us an Ipad. "I'll leave you to it. Take your time, you can read their files by clicking on their name." She added and left.

"Okayyyy that's pretty weird. It's like we're doing the groceries." Bianca joked, but I agreed with her, I didn't know it was like that.

We started looking without adding filters, but their was too many children. So we added filters. The distance first, then we had a small discussion about the sex and we were rapid to conclude that we all wanted a girl. We didn't add an age filter, and looked at the results. It was hard not to adopt them all. So we found another filter, it was to class them from the ones who were in the system the longer, to the ones who just entered it. We clicked on few names, until we nearly reach the end of the list, and appeared the little girl who had been in the system for the most time, in our location.

'Celeste Williams' was her name, and we clicked on it to be surprised of the emptiness of her file. There was only a list of families and group home she went to, but nothing else compared to the other children. At this precise moment, Janet came back.

"Have you made a choice ?" She sat down on the other side of the desk.

"We were wondering why this little girl's file was so empty, when it says she has been in the system for very long ?"

"Oh, Celeste..." Janet sighed. "She's a bit of a troubled kid."

"How ?" Asked Carina.

"She... She's been in and out of foster families because she always managed either to run away or to say bad things about them."

"Bad things ?" I picked up.

"She often accused them of... doing things to her. But it's hard to prove it when she keeps running away or lying." Janet answered looking down. I raised my eyebrows in disapproval and Carina looked at me, her eyes telling me to calm down.

"What else can you say about her ?" I questioned.

"She also has been to group homes, where she wouldn't listen to the educators. She isn't talking to other kids or adults, or even eating when they are around her. That's also why some families sent her back to the system."

I was shocked to hear all of that.

"So I won't judge you if you want to pick another child." She then added, smiling at us.

I exchanged a glare with my wife and then my daughter. Carina nodded and I asked Bianca "What do you think about it ?"

"Her story makes me sad. I think she deserves a good family. She deserves us."

I looked proudly at my daughter, she was so mature and so nice. "Are you sure sweetie ?"

"Yes. I'm sure I want her to be my sister."

"I'm so proud of you my love." I kissed the top of her head and signed the paper with Janet.

"If you're up to it, you can take her in now. She just came back from a foster family this morning so she hasn't unpack in the group home yet." Suggested Janet and we all agreed.

We left the house this morning the three of us and we were coming back as four. I couldn't be happier.