Fifteen-year-old Susan discovered an abandoned toddler on the last bus route of the day and brought him home. Her parents, Margaret and Nicholas, decided to adopt him. Years later, they learned that Nicholas was his biological father, and he had to reveal a shocking secret.
“Oh my God! Sir, stop the bus! That lady left her son here!” Susan yelled at the bus driver. It was the last route of the night because she and her friends had lost track of time at the mall. But Susan remembered a woman that got off at the earlier bus stop and didn’t realize she had left her toddler until he started crying.
“I can’t stop the bus!” the bus driver shouted back, despite Susan’s insistence. She soon realized he didn’t care, but she couldn’t just leave the baby alone on an empty bus. Would the driver do something when he finished the route? Probably not, she thought.
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Therefore, Susan did the only reasonable thing she could think of. She grabbed the toddler, who couldn’t be older than two, and took him home.
“Susan! What are you doing with that boy?” Susan’s mother, Margaret, exclaimed when she saw her daughter entering the house with a toddler on her arm. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know, Mom. Someone just abandoned him on the bus. It was way too cold, and the driver didn’t care. I couldn’t just leave him,” the teenager explained.
“Well, I guess you did the right thing, but what are we going to do now?” Margaret wondered, more to herself than to her daughter. Her husband, Nicholas, appeared in the living room and asked what was going on. They told him, and he also had no idea what to do.
“Let’s just keep him here overnight, and we’ll call the police tomorrow. They’ll try to find his parents, I guess,” Nicholas suggested, and they tended to the toddler. They gave him food and played with him. Overall, it was a pretty fun night as they hadn’t had a baby at home in many years.
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“We’ll do the best we can, but sometimes the mother doesn’t appear at all. She probably abandoned him on purpose,” the kind police lady told them the following morning. They called the non-emergency line, and a squad car came to their house to check things.
“What’s going to happen to him?” Susan asked.
“Well, he’ll go into the system just like all abandoned kids. Luckily, he’s young. He might get adopted soon,” the cop said. “We have called CPS, and they’ll be around soon to take him with them.”
The officer left, and Susan immediately told her mom that they couldn’t let the baby go. “Please, Mom. He can’t go into the system. What’s going to happen to him? We can’t just abandon him too.”
“What do you suggest we do, Susan? He’s not our baby,” Margaret said, frustrated.
“Why don’t you adopt him?”
“I can’t do that. It’s a big responsibility.”
“You always talked about having another baby but never did. Maybe this is fate!” Susan insisted, and Margaret nodded to appease her daughter, but this wasn’t an easy decision.
But when the CPS social worker came to their house a few hours later, she couldn’t let the baby go. “Please, can we foster him?” Margaret asked while Susan jumped and smiled in the background.
The lady agreed as long as Margaret and her husband got a foster parent license and all the requirements needed for New York. They both agreed, and a few weeks later, they became the boy’s official guardian. Since they couldn’t find his parents or any of his documents, they named him Joseph.
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Joseph grew up surrounded by tons of love from his parents and his big sister, Susan. She had moved out for college years ago but often visited and brought him presents. Unfortunately, she was now home for a complicated reason. Joseph needed a kidney transplant, and they were all getting tested.
Moreover, they had recently told him he was adopted and wanted Joseph to be surrounded by family, so he knew they loved him no matter what.
“What if no one is a match, Mom?” Joseph asked his mother, worried. They were going to hospitalize him tomorrow, and everyone was getting their blood tested.
“You’ll go on a list and wait for one. But that’s why you’re going to need to stay at the hospital for a while, sweetie,” Margaret explained gently.
“Mr. and Mrs. Colbert? Can I have a moment?” the doctor asked after entering their room. Margaret, Nicholas, and Susan were sitting around Joseph’s hospital room. They had gotten blood tests and were expecting the results. But Susan saw her parents looking at each other worriedly.
“What’s going on, doctor?” Susan asked, concerned. Margaret gestured with her hand, telling her daughter to calm down silently, and followed the doctor out of the room with Nicholas in tow.
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“Doctor, please tell us there’s good news,” Nicholas hoped.
“Actually, I have good news, but it’s complicated. Mr. Colbert, you are almost a perfect match for Joseph and your daughter too, which is rare considering that you said he was adopted. I thought it was strange and took the liberty of running a few more tests just in case we missed something or it was an error, and well…,” the doctor stopped for a second, looking at Margaret with pursed lips.
“I don’t understand,” she said and frowned at her husband.
“I had a hunch, so we ran a DNA test, and the results show that Mr. Colbert is Joseph’s biological father. That’s why he’s a perfect match with your son. And it means that he’s your daughter’s half-brother. You, Mrs. Colbert, are not a match,” the doctor revealed, breathing deeply at the complicated situation. “That’s why I wanted to speak to you both in private.”
Nicholas placed one hand on his waist, and the other went to his forehead in frustration. Margaret frowned deeper at her husband, realizing what had happened now. “Really, Nicholas? Really?!”
“Margaret, please listen to me,” he begged and explained that 12 years ago, he had a drunken one-night stand with a woman. “It was a mistake. A stupid mistake, and when she called with the news, I told her to get an abortion.”
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“Jesus, Nicholas,” she breathed. The doctor had left them alone a while ago, but they needed to go back inside and tell Susan about the match. “Let’s just get through this surgery. You’re giving him your kidney, not Susan. And we’ll see about the… other stuff later.”
Nicholas nodded, and they told them everything. Susan offered her kidney, actually excited that she could help her brother. But Nicholas insisted that it be him because he was a better match.
After the surgery, they told Susan the whole truth, and she couldn’t believe it, although it was great that Joseph was indeed her brother. “So that means I found my real brother abandoned on a bus. Isn’t it crazy, Mom? Maybe it was always meant to be,” she said.
Margaret nodded and cried. She was so glad that Joseph’s surgery went well that the news of her husband’s affair seemed insignificant. Joseph had brought so much joy to their household that she quickly forgave Nicholas. Although, when he recovered from surgery, he had to woo Margaret again.
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They decided to tell Joseph the truth when they left the hospital, although he was only 12. He deserved to know. And when they asked if he wanted to find his mother, the pre-teen shook his head.
“You’re my only mom,” he said and hugged Margaret. The older woman knew she had made the right choice to forgive Nicholas, even with the shocking truth they discovered. Adopting a random toddler her daughter had found had not been easy, but it was the best decision she ever made.
What can we learn from this story?
- Some things are just meant to be. Not everyone can adopt an abandoned child, but it was the right decision for the Colbert family.
- Family is more than just blood. Margaret discovered something shocking and potentially heartbreaking, but maintaining her family was more important than that. Joseph was her son, no matter what.
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