My five-year-old son had three fractures in the same leg and had never cried once. While I begged the doctors to explain how a child could walk on a freshly broken bone without feeling pain, hospital security locked the door and CPS took my baby daughter—because they believed my husband and I had been hurting him for years. I didn’t know what terrified me more: losing both my children, or realizing my son might never know when his own body was in danger.

Wednesday morning brought no relief.

Because of the active child abuse investigation, Graham and I were barred from having any direct contact with Jamie or Maisie. CPS had placed them together in a state-approved emergency foster home in suburban Denver run by a woman named Brenda Vance—a veteran foster parent who managed four high-risk children at once.

We were granted a single, sixty-minute supervised visitation at the CPS county office at 2:00 PM.

I sat in the cold, plastic chair of the CPS visitation room, staring at the clock on the wall. Every second felt like an eternity. Graham paced back and forth near the locked door, his hands jammed into his pockets, his face pale and drawn.

At precisely 2:05 PM, the door unlocked.

Brenda Vance, a large, stern-faced woman in her fifties, walked into the room pushing Jamie in a transport wheelchair. Behind her walked a social worker holding eighteen-month-old Maisie.

"Mommy! Daddy!" Jamie cried out, his face lighting up.

"Jamie! Baby!" I rushed forward, falling to my knees in front of his wheelchair, wrapping my arms around him gently, taking care not to touch his casted leg.

Graham scooped Maisie into his arms, kissing her face over and over again while she buried her small hands into his shirt collar, whimpering softly.

"Are you okay, baby?" I asked Jamie, checking his eyes, his cheeks, his arms. "Does your leg feel alright?"

"It feels heavy," Jamie said, pointing to the thick fiberglass cast extending from his foot to his thigh. "And my shoe won't fit on it."

Then, as I adjusted his collar, my heart stopped.

On Jamie’s right wrist, hidden beneath the cuff of his shirt, was a deep, raw, angry red burn mark—about the size of a half-dollar coin.

"Jamie!" I gasped, grabbing his wrist gently. "What is this?! What happened to your arm?!"

Jamie looked down at his wrist as if seeing it for the first time. "Oh. That happened at the foster house."

Brenda Vance instantly stepped forward, her face turning red. "Now wait just a minute! That child did that to himself!"

Graham snapped his head up, his eyes blazing with fury. "He burned himself in your house?!"

"He reached up onto the kitchen counter while I was dishing up soup!" Brenda argued defensively, folding her arms. "I turned my back for two seconds to grab a ladle! He touched the hot ceramic crockpot bowl! He didn't even yell or move his hand away! By the time I noticed, his skin was already blistering! He just stood there looking at it!"

"Because he can't feel heat!" I screamed at her, standing up, my entire body shaking with rage. "He has a neurological condition! I told the CPS worker yesterday that he cannot be left near hot stove tops or irons!"

"Nobody told me anything about a medical condition!" Brenda snapped back. "I was told I was taking in a child from an abusive home!"

"Listen to me, you miserable woman!" Graham barked, stepping into Brenda's space, holding Maisie tightly against his chest. "If my son suffers one more injury in your care, I will make sure you spend the rest of your life in a state penitentiary!"

"Mr. Mercer! Back off right now!" the supervising social worker shouted, stepping between them with a panic button in her hand. "If you threaten the foster parent, this visitation is terminated immediately!"

"He has a burn on his hand!" I cried, showing the social worker Jamie's red, blistering wrist. "Look at it! He doesn't know to pull his hand away from heat! He could burn his house down or injure himself permanently if she isn't watching him every single second!"

The social worker looked at the burn mark on Jamie’s wrist, a brief look of genuine alarm crossing her face. But she quickly recovered her bureaucratic composure.

"I will make a note of the incident in the case file," the social worker said rigidly. "However, Mr. and Mrs. Mercer, your sixty minutes are up. You need to leave the room."

"No! Please!" Jamie cried, reaching out his small hands to grab my shirt. "Mommy, don't leave me! I want to go home! I'll be good, I promise! I won't fall off the ladder anymore!"

"Jamie, you didn't do anything wrong!" I sobbed as the social worker pulled his wheelchair back toward the door. "Mommy and Daddy are fighting for you! We are coming to get you tomorrow! Hold on, baby! Hold on!"

The door closed again, severing us from our children once more.

I stood in the hallway, looking down at my hands. They were covered in my own tears, but inside my chest, something fundamental shifted. The despair that had paralyzed me since yesterday transformed into absolute, lethal determination.

I looked at Graham. "Call Arthur. Tell him we aren't just fighting for custody tomorrow."