5 secondes

A woman hands her baby to a young stranger on an RER platform and walks away.
A fictional story inspired by a recent “news item.”
A child cries out on the RER train. His mother leaves the baby with a young man who helped her bring the stroller down to the platform. It all happened in a matter of seconds; the train doors closed, and the mother blended into the crowd of passengers, watching her child and the stranger—who looked quite flustered—through the window. What should he do? Go to the police station and hand the child over to social workers?
The man, who also has a difficult life—an idle pot smoker who barely ever leaves his room—imagines looking after the baby for a few hours, but he ends up “following procedure.”
During the mother’s trial, he is in the audience and recounts the past of this woman with no first name—anonymous among the anonymous—abandoned by the child’s father. She keeps repeating that she simply couldn’t cope anymore. Amid the accusing stares, he is the only one who tries to understand her, and he meets her gaze one last time—just as he did on that fateful day—through the RER train window.