The man with the red bandana spoke again. “We’re part of a network — emergency placement foster parents for the state. We take the babies no one else will. The drug-exposed ones. The ones born early. The ones who don’t have a shot.”

He pulled out his wallet and showed me his foster license. “Right now, I’m caring for Baby Sophie. Six days old. Her mother abandoned her at a gas station. She’s got neonatal abstinence syndrome — born addicted.”

My heart clenched. We all knew Sophie. Everyone in the NICU did. She’d spent her first week trembling, crying through withdrawal, her tiny body struggling to find peace. She needed constant holding, and there were never enough arms.

“What does she have to do with Mrs. Chen?” I asked.

A biker in a black bandana spoke up. “Dorothy’s her great-grandmother. Her granddaughter — the baby’s