Janet’s voice trembled with desperation as she pleaded for more time, her eyes filled with tears as she clutched her daughter, Emily, tightly in her arms. “Please, just a little more time,” she begged, her voice cracking with sorrow. “I promise, we’ll have the money. Just wait until tomorrow!”
But the guard remained unmoved, his expression cold and unyielding. He reached for Emily, his grip firm as he began to pull the frightened child from her mother’s embrace. Janet’s heart ached as she clung to her daughter, her voice a desperate plea. “My husband will be home tomorrow! Please, just give us one more day!”
The collector, a man who had grown callous to the pleas of parents over the years, merely smirked in response. Every day, he heard the same excuses, the same promises of payment tomorrow. To him, it was all just noise, a part of the job he had grown accustomed to.
“We’ll have the money tomorrow, I swear,” Janet continued to cry, her words falling on deaf ears. The collector didn’t care about the reasons why parents couldn’t pay their debts. His job was simple—collect child commodities, regardless of the heartbreak and devastation it caused.
With a dismissive wave of his hand, he interrupted Janet’s pleas. “It’s out of my hands,” he said coldly. “Call your local VEP office. They’ll give you instructions on how to get your daughter back.”
Emily, her eyes filled with fear and confusion, was forcibly torn from her mother’s arms. She was thrown into the back of the truck with the other children, her cries echoing the heartbreak of countless others who had been torn from their families. As the truck pulled away, Janet was left standing there, her world shattered, her pleas unanswered, and her daughter gone.