"Olga is in the hospital!" (little did we know that it was an attempted suicide)

Another adoptive mom who was in regular contact with Olga's orphanage director sent me this email in early May 2002:

"Olga is in the hospital!" She went on to explain that she'd been told that Olga ate some cake from a recent celebration (probably "Victory Day" on May 9th) that had been left out and gone bad.

Then, the next day we received this in an email from an American couple adopting in the same region--they'd offered to go by our orphanage to meet our Olga and take some birthday gifts we sent and make some videos for us:

"We went to the orphanage again today. We could not see Olga as she was in the hospital with a stomach flu. (Director) said she will be fine."

We never questioned these explanations, we had no reason to do so at the time. However, you can imagine our surprise when Olga told us the real story just 5 or 6 months after becoming our daughter--this had been her second suicide attempt in just a few weeks. We can only assume that the Director did not want to alarm us or cause us to have any reservations about adopting Olga.