It would have been so much easier, and so much safer, to decide that this was not my fight.

I was staff.

I was temporary.

I had a child whose entire security rested on my keeping my head down and my mouth shut.

Every practical consideration in my life pointed toward pretending I had seen nothing.

But there is a thing that happens when you look into the eyes of a helpless person and understand that you may be the only one who can help them, a thing that overrides all the practical considerations at once.

You cannot un-know it.