Madeleine Wallace’s POV
The streets reeked of human waste and the sharp pungent smell of rubbish. Somewhere in the distance, someone was burning their trash, which explained the thick smell of smoke the punctuated the air. Gradually, the burning smell was taking a dominant spot in the cocktail of smells that filtered through the stale air of Gotham City.
Madeleine walked closely behind her mother, as they silently turned the corner of their street to head to the main road of Gotham’s downtown. Madeleine’s little legs ached by trying to match her pace with her mother’s long, brisk strides. But Madeleine kept up, slightly out of breath, yet hopeful with each step.
The night was coated in a thick layer of fog that covered the dark clouds, which hovered over Gotham City. Madeleine gathered her tattered coat close to her chest, holding it tight to prevent the night air from stealing the little remaining warmth of her body. A GCPD car zoomed by the walking duo in a flash, awakening Madeleine from her cold dread that mingled with her hopes. After all, a child had the right to hope. Hope was the only light that kept Madeleine’s dark world afloat.
But just as the police car zipped beside the walking pair of the mother-daughter, Madeleine felt a wave of hate rise in her chest. It quickly crashed but the hate wave left a hollow feeling, immediately replaced by a sudden guilt. Madeleine didn’t know what to think or feel. Uncertainty enveloped her mind, preventing her from thinking straight.
But there was a tiny thought, the size of a small pea, that had taken root in the little girl’s mind. She wondered if the GCPD was supposed to help her and her mother in the time of such crisis. Her mother was dedicated to her job but it seemed that her job as a professor wasn’t equally dedicated. Because, when Mrs. Wallace, a widow, and mother of two, requested for loans and pre-payment of her salary for some months, nobody at work responded.
She gave an account of her desperate situation to almost anyone and everyone she knew in the Gotham City but no one helped. Even Madeleine figured that only people on high posts at her mother’s work could help them. But it turned out that such bloody rich people were encased in a shell of selfishness. Not even a word of their painful circumstances made way to their hearts. The neighbors, on the other hand, were indulged in a massive swamp of poverty that covered most of Gotham City’s downtown.
It was futile even asking them. Still, Madeleine’s mother didn’t give up. She worked double shifts to make the ends meet. But their situation aggravated with the unavailability of a cure for Madeleine’s brother, Cameron’s joint bacterial infection. It had seemed that the bacteria was unlike the kinds previously understood by the doctors of Gotham City.
On top of it, no one was willing to take Cameron’s case or care for him.
