No touching

There's a no-touching policy at the hospital. I can understand it. Once a boy snuck into a girl's room and they had sex without the staff knowing and DCFS threatened to yank all their wards for good (which is not a bad idea, because it's a freaking hassle and a half dealing with DCFS kids and their slow-ass bureaucracy).

But there's a girl there--and she's not alone in this--who radiates the need to be touched. You can see it emanate from her in waves. She's crumbling inside with her desperate need for affection. She'll try to hug the staff, and with varying degrees of kindness, they'll remind her of the rule. When she approaches me, I don't have the heart to discourage her, so I let her rest her head on my shoulder, and put one arm around her to guide her back to whatever she should be doing. Her thin body pulls all the warmth from my fingertips.

I remember, way back in the days of being a camp counselor and blanketing the chapel with inspirational messages, one said that you need four hugs a day for survival, eight for maintenance, and twelve for growth. To be missing that most basic of human touches, my heart hurts for those kids.