Most children grow up within their family and their home. There are, however, children who grow up in a hospital ward.

At the “Agia Sofia” Children’s Hospital, dozens of children are not here temporarily. They live here. From birth or from a very early age. Not because medical reasons require it, but because they were abandoned there or because they were removed—sometimes violently—from their homes.

The 10th episode of “Medusa” by protothema.gr seeks to highlight a reality that rarely fits into news reporting. Abandoned children. Children with severe trauma—physical and invisible.

“The hardest and most intense moment is when they search for their parents and cry out ‘mom,’ ‘dad,’” says Anastasios Michas, Administrator of the “Agia Sofia” and “Aglia Kyriakou” Children’s Hospitals, speaking to protothema.gr, explaining that many children learned to call the nurse “mom” and the social worker “godmother.”

Within the same corridors, some people made a choice. Not to leave. To become a family without paperwork and to keep standing children who had nothing certain ahead of them. With hugs, birthdays, care, and a daily life that is not captured in statistics.