Three days of calling Karen Liu's office. Three days of her voicemail greeting—warm, professional, designed for women exactly like me who are wearing grooves into their phone screens before dawn.
I work, I call, I work again. Edmund passes my desk four times on Thursday morning and doesn't speak, which is either restraint or strategy.
At two-fifteen I'm collating meeting prep in the conference room when my phone vibrates against the mahogany. Not Karen Liu—different number. I grab it and push through the stairwell door.
My back finds the concrete wall. Nobody from the third floor can see my face out here, which is about to matter.
"Miss Whitfield, this is Priya Anand, caseworker assigned to your application." Clipped, reading from a screen. "I'm calling regarding your emergency foster placement petition for Blythe Whitfield."
"Yes." My free hand grips the metal railing. "I submitted everything last week—the employment letter, the lease deposit, the personal statement."
"I have your file open." A pause—the fluorescent tube above me flickers twice. "Your background check has returned a flag, Miss Whitfield."
"A theft conviction," she continues. "Conditional discharge, dated approximately two years ago."
The stairwell tilts. My shoulder blades press harder into concrete. "That was a conditional discharge, not a conviction—it's spent."
"Under emergency placement guidelines, any criminal record—including conditional discharges—disqualifies an applicant." Her voice carries the gentleness that I don’t feel. "Your petition has been denied."
"I stole prescription medication." The railing digs a line across my palm. "My sister's medication—the insurance lapsed and the refill was four hundred pounds."
"I understand the circumstances, and I'm sorry. The guidelines don't distinguish based on context."
"She has Wilson's disease." My voice bounces off concrete and comes back jagged. "Do you understand what happens when copper accumulates in a sixteen-year-old's liver because her sister couldn't cover the pharmacy markup?"
The echo dies against concrete. "I took one box of penicillamine—one box, to keep a sixteen-year-old girl's liver from shutting down."
"Miss Whitfield." Priya waits until my breathing evens, which takes longer than I'd like. "There's a second matter."
"An emergency foster guardian has been approved for Blythe, and placement is currently underway." She delivers it the way you'd deliver a second punch before the first one's finished landing.
My knees give—two inches down the concrete before I catch myself, bag strap biting into my shoulder. The railing is the only reason I'm still standing at a height where adults make decisions.
"Who has her." The question mark doesn't survive my throat—comes out flat, declarative. "Tell me who has my sister."
"I'm unable to disclose the guardian's identity until paperwork is finalised. That's standard protocol for emergency placements."
"My sister is in a stranger's house and you can't tell me which stranger." I'm making a sound that could be laughter if you're generous with the definition.
"You have the right to file a formal appeal—written statement, supporting evidence, character references." Papers shuffle on her end. "A hearing would then be scheduled."
"How long?" My thumbnail scores a groove into the railing's paint, white flaking onto the step below.
"Typically four to six weeks from submission." She says it the way someone quotes a bus timetable—accurate, entirely indifferent to what you'll miss while you wait at the stop.
"Send the appeal paperwork to my email." My thumb finds the end-call button and presses it, and the stairwell goes so quiet I can hear the building breathe through its pipes.
I give myself sixty seconds. Same ration as the bathroom after holding Oliver's toy car. Except that was about a boy I chose to give away, and this is a girl someone chose to take, and the distinction carves a line between survivable and something else.
I stole medicine to keep her alive because the alternative was watching copper eat her organs while I did maths in a pharmacy queue. And that single, correct decision is the reason a panel I've never met stamped me insufficient to protect the person I've been protecting since seventeen.
Sixty seconds ends. I wipe my face with my sleeve, check my reflection in my phone's black screen, and push through the stairwell door with my back straight because otherwise I’d never recover.
The conference room hasn't moved. I sit, open my laptop, and stare at Whitmore formatting with eyes that refuse to focus on font sizes when someone I don't know is cooking my sister dinner tonight.
"Cora." Elisa materialises in the doorway—silk blouse, folder against her hip, smile measured to the millimetre. "Quick question on the Hargrove file—Edmund mentioned you had the updated client brief?"
"It's on the shared drive, same folder as last week." My voice comes out wrong—a blade where a sentence should be. "Same place it's been every single time you've asked."
Elisa's smile holds perfectly still—not a muscle, not a fraction. But something behind it recalibrates, a note being taken in ink that doesn't wash out.
"Of course. I must have missed it." She taps the folder against her thigh once and turns on her heel.
I watch her go with my fingernails denting half-moons into my palms. First time I've lost composure in this building, and I handed it to the one person keeping score.
I'm reformatting page six for the third time when Edmund's shoes appear at the edge of my desk. I know they're his—three weeks of learning that unhurried, even stride, the walk that means he has never had to run from anything inside his own home.
"Cora, I need to talk to you." Close enough that cedar reaches me through the recycled air. "It's important."
"Can it wait until I finish the Whitmore sections?" I don't look up. If I look up, he'll see the stairwell still pooled behind my eyes, and I don't have the scaffolding for whatever careful, kind thing comes next.
"It really can't." His voice drops half a register—the one that isn't professional, the one from Kettleworth. "There's something I need to tell you."
"Then send me an email." I close the laptop and stand, phone already in my hand, Priya Anand's number already glowing on the screen. "I have to make a call."
"Cora—" His fingers brush my elbow and the contact sends something through my arm that I pull away from, because I cannot be touched right now by hands that are warm when everything I'm holding has just been declared insufficient.
I'm past him, bag on my shoulder, jaw clenched around everything I can't say to a man who watches me like I'm worth watching when a caseworker just confirmed I am not enough. The corridor stretches and my heels sound too loud on the tile and I don't look back.
The lift doors open. I step in and turn around. Edmund is standing in the corridor—hands at his sides, mouth open around a word he didn't get to finish.
The doors close on whatever it was. My phone rings through to voicemail again—Priya Anand's outgoing message filling a metal box that carries me down floor by floor, my forehead against the wall, my fist pressed so tight against my thigh that my knuckles throb for the rest of the afternoon.