The dispatch call came through at 2:17 a.m.—a time when most of the city slept, and the streets felt strangely empty. I assumed it would be another welfare check in a building I’d visited more times than I could count. But when I stepped into that freezing apartment and heard a newborn’s cries slicing through the silence, I had no idea that moment would alter the course of the next sixteen years of my life.
