Krystyn’s charges were always broken utterly, until they hadn’t an adult thought in their blue-eyed, curly-locked blonde heads. Krystyn picked Jimmy up out of his playpen and carried him to her car, strapping him securely in the baby seat in the rear, then stowed his diaper bag on the floor behind the passenger seat.

A few minutes later they arrived and parked at the Daycare center. Krystyn unbuckled Jimmy from the seat and hoisted him over her right hip to carry him inside. When Krystyn opened the second of the doubled air-locking glass doors of the center, little Jimmy saw that the walls of the reception area had been painted a restful light blue with two foot diameter spots of pink, yellow and aqua-green. The woman at the reception counter was expecting them and buzzed for one of the nursery attendants. Krystyn had called ahead and had arranged everything with her friend. They were met at the front counter by a pert young woman who said, “This must be little Jimmy! I was told to expect him. Sign him in and I’ll take his diaper bag.”

The young woman reached out her arms and took Jimmy into her hands, leaving the diaper bag where Krystyn placed it on the countertop. Jimmy squealed in fear and abandonment as he was taken out of the main reception area and huddled against the young woman as he was carried into a room with a gay nursery cutout over the door to indicate the age of the room’s occupants.

The last he saw of Krystyn was her back as the glass door of the entrance closed behind her. Andrew was in a panic as well as Jimmy. He had been left in an unfamiliar place to be taken care of by strangers. Who knew what they were really like? Would they feed and change him, or leave him to languish in dirty diapers all day? What if he had a medical emergency? Would these people call Krystyn? Could she be reached? Would they let him die alone and uncared for in some forgotten crib? As angry as he was with Krystyn, at least she was a reliable caretaker for him. At least she made sure he was bathed, fed and changed his diapers regularly. Who were these people and why should they care about him? They were total unknowns! The sound of the infants’ crying from the nursery section of the Daycare was ominous…

Baby Jimmy was in a terrible state. His MOMMY had left him. Where was she? Didn’t she understand that they were two inseparable parts? He was surrounded by odd faces and screaming infants. He wanted his mommy!

“Don’t cry, Sweetheart!” said the Daycare worker sympathetically, “My name is Gail and I’m going to see that you’re made nice and comfy the way a baby should be!” Then she opened the lower half of the nursery door to admit herself and closed it behind her.

As the nursery’s lower door closed, Andrew’s adult mind went into a state of blind panic in utter despair and abandonment. She had really done it! She had abandoned him! At first he had hoped her leaving was only some sort of sick joke. Once he knew the truth, the bottom fell out of his stomach and gave him a sick feeling of absolute helplessness in an unknown and uncontrollable situation. His mouth tasted of bitter copper and the baby part of his mind made him wet his diapers in terror. It wasn’t that he was attached to Krystyn. On the contrary, he was still livid with her, but she was the only remaining thread he had with his previous life. Once she was gone, he was just another baby in a nursery full of infants. At least Krystyn knew who he really was. No one else had a clue to his previous existence. Andrew had been lonely as an unknown college student, but the absolute sense of abandonment he felt as the nursery door closed overwhelmed him. For the first time in his life, he was without anyone he knew who could help him. He was completely alone in a room full of diapered babies and their caregivers. There was no escape. Once the door was shut, he was committed unto the supervision of people he had never met who held the power of life and death over him. As he was carried into the nursery, he was greeted with a cri de coeur from almost every one of the nursery’s hungry inhabitants as he was brought into middle of the room to be assigned his crib. Had Andrew been able to scream like the other babies in the nursery, he would have.