The Beginning of a New Year

Richard and I are not one's for staying up to see the New Year in... so, as usual, by 11:00 pm we were in bed. Sleeping a well earned rest, I might add. We were awoken by our door bell.

Who on earth would be calling at... 4:30 am? Richard hurried downstairs, as fast as his befuddled sleepy state would allow, to find a young lady curled up in my chair. That's right there was a young girl about 14 years old curled up in my chair. How did she get there?

Richard had forgotten to take the keys out of the back door and probably had not locked the door either, and it appears this was one evening when I did not check the door. Obviously this is not the best thing to do on New Years Eve. If the girl had not rung the door bell we probably would have gotten up this morning to the unwanted visitor.

I did not go downstairs right away because it would mean putting on my leg. When I heard the crying, if you could call it that, I decided it was prudent for me to make the effort to go and see what was going on. At the bottom of the stairs Richard was blocking them from the young lady. He explained that she was already in the house when he got down stairs and he had phoned the Police.

I led the girl back to the kitchen and tried to find out her name... to no avail. She was pretty wasted, had obviously been drinking sometime during the evening and also had some drugs or something in her system. She would not give her name, did say she had been hurt by someone and Richard was close by so chose him. I explained that that could not be as he had just arrived downstairs to find her in our home. She was extremely cold, shivering uncontrollably, had only a fairly light wool jacket on and was in stocking feet. She looked as if someone had hit her in the face, her lip was swollen and the skin broken. I asked her if she would like a hot drink and was in the process of making her a hot chocolate when the Police arrived.

It appears she is a regular run away from a Group Home here in PA. He asked her if she was a run away and asked if her name was ... ? She acknowledged both, he told her to get her shoes, but she said 'I don't want to pass those people' making out that we had hurt her. We explained that she did not have any shoes, had entered the house due to our carelessness in leaving the keys in the door.

The Police officer took the young girl out to his vehicle then came back to check all was fine with us and our home. We explained that although there was money on the table and bottles of medication clearly visible (Richard had renewed some of my prescriptions). She had touched nothing. The Officer told us that she is known by them as a repeat run away and had probably been attending a party that was a few blocks over from us. The lads that were shouting and swearing outside our house were probably looking for the girl and part of the partying crowd. He wished us a good night and left us to return to our beds.

I awoke next at 10:45. I also had to ask Richard if all this had happened in the night or if it was a dream. If it had been a dream we had both had the same one. So an eventful beginning to our New Year.