My mom told everyone I loved sleeping on the floor, and they believed her for years.

Hospitalization and Initial Transition

The doctors say I’m lucky to be alive, but sitting here in Hugo’s warm apartment, I’m still trying to figure out what lucky actually means. I’m telling this from 6 months out, looking back at the winter that put me in the hospital with hypothermia and frostbite that might cost me some toes.

The hospital kept me for 3 days total while they monitored my core temperature and the damage to my fingers and toes. The doctor explained that some of my toes might not fully recover because the tissue died from being frozen too long and I’d need to come back for regular checkups to see if they’d have to remove any.

He showed Hugo pictures on his computer of what frostbite damage looked like, pointing at the dark spots on my smallest toes and explaining about blood flow and tissue death in words I didn’t really understand.

The nurses came in every few hours to check my temperature and look at my feet, unwrapping the bandages carefully and writing notes on their clipboards.

Eleanor from the hospital social services came to my room on the second day and explained that she’d filed a report with child protective services because what happened to me wasn’t an accident or a game. She was gentle but clear that the state needed to investigate how an 8-year-old ended up with severe hypothermia from sleeping outside in February.

She sat in the chair next to my bed and asked me questions about how long this had been going on, writing everything down in a notebook. Mom tried to stay in my hospital room the whole time, crying and holding my hand and telling anyone who’d listen that I had sleepwalking problems she’d been trying to manage.

She kept touching my hair and calling me her baby boy, acting like the concerned mother who’d been fighting to keep me safe. But after Ne’s comment about why dad really left, the police officer who’d been taking notes asked mom to step into the hallway for some questions.

I watched through the doorway as more officers arrived and mom’s voice got higher and louder as she tried to explain. Hugo sat with me that second night after mom got taken away in handcuffs.

He kept apologizing for not pushing harder at Thanksgiving when I’d asked about frostbite. He pulled his chair right up next to the bed and held my hand, telling me he should have known something was really wrong.

He felt he had let mom’s tears and excuses work on him when his gut told him I needed help. His voice kept cracking and he had to stop talking a few times to wipe his eyes.

I told him it wasn’t his fault because mom was really good at making people believe her stories, but he just shook his head and said he was supposed to protect me. When I got discharged on day three, the doctor gave Hugo a whole list of instructions about wound care for my toes, keeping me warm and watching for signs of infection.

There was also a paper about a therapy referral and strict orders that I couldn’t have any contact with mom until CPS said otherwise. The doctor made Hugo repeat back the instructions about changing my bandages and checking for red streaks or bad smells that would mean infection.

Hugo folded all the papers carefully and put them in his backpack, nodding at everything the doctor said. Eleanor explained that CPS had to decide within 24 to 48 hours where I’d be living while they investigated.

Hugo had already offered to take me, but they needed to do a home check first. I felt scared about being a burden on my brother who was supposed to be focusing on college, not taking care of a damaged kid.

Hugo was only 21 and lived in a tiny apartment near campus, and I knew taking me would mess up his whole life. The CPS case worker, Julian, came to meet me at the hospital before discharge, asking me questions about how long I’d been sleeping outside and whether mom had ever hurt me in other ways.

I didn’t know how to explain that she never hit me or yelled much. She just made me believe I deserved the cold because I needed to be tougher than other kids.

Julian had kind eyes and a quiet voice, and he didn’t rush me when I had trouble finding the right words. He wrote everything down in a folder with my name on it, asking follow-up questions about what mom said to me and whether anyone else knew what was happening.

Julian interviewed Hugo and Na separately and later told me that it was clear Na had mixed feelings about mom getting arrested. She’d told the truth about dad leaving after he tried to report mom once before, but she also kept saying, “Mom had good days and really did love us in her own way.”.

Julian explained that Nia was confused and that was normal for kids in these situations, that she’d been treated differently than me. So, her experience with mom was different.

By the end of that first week, CPS made a preliminary finding that the neglect and abuse allegations were indicated, meaning they believed mom had deliberately harmed me. They put a temporary no contact order in place that said mom couldn’t call, text, visit, or try to reach me through other people until the court decided what happened next.

Julian came to Hugo’s apartment to deliver the paperwork and explain what it all meant, going over each section slowly, so we understood. The order was printed on official paper with a judge’s signature at the bottom, and seeing it in writing made everything feel more real and permanent.

Hugo’s apartment near campus was basically one room with a bathroom attached and a kitchen area that was just part of the living room with a counter separating them. We spent the first afternoon setting up a sleeping spot for me on the couch, piling blankets and pillows until it looked more like a nest than a bed.

Hugo turned the thermostat up to 74°, even though I could tell from the way he glanced at it that he usually kept it way lower to save money. Julian had told him I needed to stay consistently warm while my body recovered from the hypothermia.

So Hugo didn’t complain about the higher heating bill even once. The apartment felt almost too warm at first, like my skin didn’t know how to handle being comfortable after months of training myself to ignore the cold.

I kept touching the radiator under the window just to feel the heat coming off it, proving to myself that warmth was actually real and available whenever I wanted it. Hugo showed me where he kept the extra blankets in the hall closet and told me I could use as many as I needed.

This felt strange because at mom’s house, taking extra blankets would have meant I was being weak and spoiled. That first night at Hugo’s place, I fell asleep on the couch feeling safer than I had in months, wrapped in three blankets with the heat running steady.

But I woke up at 3:00 a.m. on the floor next to the front door, curled up in a tight ball like I’d been trying to get comfortable on the porch. My body had moved there in my sleep without me knowing, following months of programming that said the door was where I belonged at night.

I was confused and cold from lying on the floor, and I didn’t understand how I’d gotten there or why my brain had decided that was the right place to be. Hugo found me there in the morning when he came out of his bedroom to make coffee.

And instead of getting mad or asking a bunch of questions, he just helped me back to the couch. He made hot chocolate with extra marshmallows and handed it to me without saying anything about the floor incident.

But I could see the worried look in his eyes. The worry wasn’t angry or disappointed, just concerned, like he was trying to figure out what it meant that I’d moved to the door in my sleep.

2 days into staying with Hugo, my phone rang from a number I didn’t recognize. And when I answered it, mom’s voice came through asking if I was okay.

She said she just needed to hear that I was safe, that she was worried about me, and wanted to make sure Hugo was taking good care of me. I froze up completely, my hand gripping the phone so tight my knuckles turned white.

Unable to hang up or say anything back to her, Hugo noticed me standing there frozen and took the phone from my hand, telling mom she wasn’t supposed to be calling and that she was violating the court order. He ended the call and immediately texted Julian to report the violation, his fingers moving fast across his phone screen.

I felt guilty for not hanging up myself, like maybe I should have been strong enough to end the call without Hugo’s help. The school district called Hugo a few days later to set up a meeting about transferring me to a new school closer to his apartment.

They mentioned something called a 504 plan that would give me accommodations for medical and trauma needs, like being able to leave class if I got upset or having extra time on tests. I felt embarrassed hearing about it because it meant everyone at the new school would know I was the kid with problems, the one who needed special help.

Hugo said it just meant the school would help me instead of making things harder, that having accommodations wasn’t something to be ashamed of. But I still felt like it was another way I was different and broken compared to normal kids who didn’t need special plans.

Na came to visit during the second week, and at first she kept saying things that sounded exactly like mom’s explanations. She talked about how the cold was supposed to make me stronger.

How mom had been trying to prepare me for a tough world, how maybe I’d misunderstood her intentions. I felt my stomach hurt listening to her repeat mom’s words like they made sense.

Like maybe I really had been too dramatic about everything, but she stayed for 3 hours instead of the 1 hour she’d planned and we talked about specific things that had happened. This included the time mom locked the door when it was snowing, or the night she told me I didn’t deserve to be warm.

Before Nvi left, she admitted she was confused about whether mom had been trying to help me or hurt me, that she didn’t know what to believe anymore.