Chapter 2

I reclaimed my life as a general practitioner. Using the last of my pre-marriage savings, I opened a small clinic in the heart of the Rust Belt community.

By day, I treated patients; by night, I buried myself in medical journals.

One winter evening, a brutal blizzard swept through the block.

I locked up the clinic as usual, only to find a homeless boy collapsed in a snowbank in the back alley, his clothes practically rags.

He had slipped into a deep coma from severe pneumonia. His breathing was terrifyingly shallow, yet his frozen fingers were still death-gripping a half-eaten,…