Would they come? The nearing sirens say “yes!”.
Police arrive first, alerted by a passerby of the whimpering bundle which lay cold and hungry next to the railway track, less than 50 metres from where blessed pensioners live out the last of their full lives at Kosmos Park.
Her life has just begun!
This is the story of Middelburg’s little warrior princess, Baby X, who was miraculously found on Friday night where she was dumped by her mother and left for dead.
The torn umbilical cord bears bloody testimony of her birth hours before.
Her little kitten meows breaking the night’s silence, reaching a teenager on a shortcut to who knows where. When they reach that age, its better not to ask. It’s pitch dark and the sounds are suspicious, maybe a tokoloshe, he calls the cops.
They arrive, the Observer arrives, but where are the ambulances?
The standby phone’s back light goes on, beep beep it goes as the journalist’s fingers dance across the keypad with frantic fervor.
Minutes later the darkness is broken by a stream of oncoming red.
They’re here, they’ve come, hallelujah!
ER24 paramedics pick her up in the veld behind the Middelburg Care Village. It is 20:00, the night is still an embryo, as the saying goes.
The irony is sickening.
Warning: Graphic Content:
Just metres from where her mother hoped she would die, orphans sat watching Strictly Come Dancing, full bellies, bathed and dressed in comfortable nighties.
She lay bloody and naked, two blocks away from her new home, the Middelburg Hospital.
Let it not be said that a newspaper did not save her life.
Paramedics believe that it was the advertising sheet, wrapped around her, that protected her from the cold’s sharp teeth.
She quickly crept into the heart of one of her saviours, the burly reservist w/o Abdool Kasu, who on Saturday forgot he didn’t sleep all night, he just had to see her. Perhaps adoption, he tells the nurses. If only it was that simple…
•Police are now looking to the community to help them arrest the mother and charge her with abandonment and neglect.
People with information can contact captain Khanyisile Zwane on 082 462 1896.
