Prologue 2

  It was October sixth, 2005. Hurricane Stan had finally let up after five relentless days.

  On paper, the forecasts had sounded almost casual—a Category 1 storm, expected to cause only minimal damage. Reality was very different. Guatemala’s mountains had turned the rain into weapons: flooding, mudslides, entire hillsides sliding down and swallowing homes. Roads vanished. Bridges snapped. Access to clean water collapsed almost overnight.

  The numbers on the radio climbed by the hour. Three thousand people were currently unaccounted for. The expected death toll hovered near a thousand and kept rising.

  For Axel, those numbers weren’t statistics on the news. They were the old woman who worked at the grocery store, the neighbour who brought over leftovers, and the little boy who refused to let go of his father’s hand.

  Axel had already been in Guatemala for seven months when the hurricane made landfall. He and his wife had come to work on a public health project, traveling between rural towns to inform people about essential medicines, especially HIV and AIDS treatments after the DR-CAFTA agreement had been signed.

  But once the storm hit, their priorities flipped.

  Days that had been spent vaccinating and testing now blurred into a rush of triage. They wrapped wounds, stopped bleeding, splinted broken bones, then ran to the next patient, and the next, and the next.

  The hospital was cold. The electricity was spotty at best, and the generator coughed itself on and off every half hour. The corridors plunged into darkness before sputtering back to life almost on a schedule. Axel’s panic never really left his body. His hands trembled, his feet ached, and he hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours.

  But his strength stood at his side.

  One look at Lilly, his wife, her dark hair frizzed from rain and sweat, eyes still sharp despite the fatigue, lightened something in his chest. She pushed the shadows back just by being there.

  He shook his head and forced his focus back to the woman on the stretcher.

  She was small, old, and fragile. Her skin an unhealthy pale; she was in shock. A thick branch had pierced her leg during the flooding; dried mud clung to the wound. Lilly had already tied a tourniquet high on the thigh, her fingers stained brown and red.

  “Lilly. Grab her. Let’s move her to a bed.”

  They shifted into automatic rhythm.

  “One, two, three—go.”

  With one last strained breath they lifted her and slid her onto the nearest mattress. The sheets were still damp from the last patient, streaked with mud and dirt. It wasn’t hygienic, not even close, but they weren’t in the business of clean right now. They were in the business of alive. Antiseptics could come later—if they got more at all.

  He turned to Lilly. “Intravenous fluids. She’s in shock.”

  Lilly pressed the IV set into his hand without a word. Axel searched for a vein—first the arm, then the back of her hand. It was always easier there on elderly patients, the veins like raised blue wires under thin skin.

  The needle slipped in on the second try. As the fluids began to drip, some tight invisible band around his chest loosened. His shoulders unclenched a fraction.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  For the first time in hours, he let himself look up.

  No new patients crowded the hallway. No one waited on stretchers in the doorways. The low chorus of groans still leaked from behind plastic curtains, but without fresh supplies of medicine there was only so much they could do. That was what had gutted them most. Not the hurricane itself, but the aftermath. The roads gone, trucks stuck, medicine sitting useless in some warehouse miles away.

  Lilly tugged his sleeve. “We should go,” she murmured. “We need sleep.”

  Axel knew she was right. They’d worked well past the hospital’s official twenty-four-hour cap. But like most doctors he only stopped when there was no one left he could help, when his patients were at least stable.

  He glanced once more down the corridor. Still no new stretchers. No shouting. No rush.

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  The second the word left his mouth, exhaustion crashed over him. It was like his body had been waiting for permission to collapse. Pain flared up and down his legs, hunger gnawed at his stomach like a black hole, and he realized, with a strange detached clarity, that his vision had been blurry for hours.

  She slipped her hand into his and they walked in silence. They headed for the doctors’ quarters. The roads still weren’t safe for travel, and they both wanted to stay as close to the hospital as possible in case new patients arrived.

  When they pushed open the door, the soft chorus of snores greeted them. A few other doctors were already collapsed on narrow cots.

  Axel went straight to his locker. Inside, a secret stash of muesli bars and snacks waited for exactly a night like this. He grabbed a handful and tossed a few to Lilly.

  She caught them, flashed him a tired smile, and they each slid into separate beds.

  Axel rolled onto his side and watched her as her eyes fluttered closed, her breathing settling into a gentle, rhythmic rise and fall. Only when she surrendered to sleep did Axel finally feel allowed to do the same. His dreams pulled him down into the dark—a quiet abyss that felt safer than the chaos outside.

  Until he woke to crying.

  The quarters were almost empty now. Only Lilly and Axel remained, but something was different. The sound was soft and raw: a baby’s wail.

  He blinked blearily, hoping it was a fragment of a nightmare. But when his gaze landed on the small bundle near the doorway, his heart lurched.

  He slid out of bed and moved toward it carefully. Kneeling, he peeled back the blanket.

  He froze.

  The baby flinched at the movement, but its eyes didn’t track him at all—staring past him, unfocused. Blind, Axel thought. Or something close to it. He pressed his palm to the child’s cheek.

  Hot. Feverish. But his breathing was steady and rhythmic, his pulse fast but not yet dangerously so.

  He relaxed, and then the strangeness of it hit him fully. A baby. In the doctors’ quarters. If someone had brought him in for treatment, he wouldn’t have been left here, alone.

  He lifted the baby from the basket, and an envelope slipped to the floor. Axel stooped to pick it up, his hands shaking as worst-case scenarios crowded his mind.

  He couldn’t do this alone. Not without Lilly.

  Cradling the child, he crossed the room and sat on the edge of her bed. He brushed a thumb over her cheek. “Lilly,” he murmured.

  She stirred, blinking awake, her eyes slowly focusing on him—then dropping to the baby in his arms. Her brows pulled together.

  “What are you doing with that?” she whispered.

  “I found him,” Axel said.

  Silence settled between them for a heartbeat. Then he held out the envelope. “And this. Can you read it?”

  She took it, tore it open, and read aloud:

  “I’m sorry. I can’t take care of him. He cries and cries, nothing helps.

  He doesn’t react to me or anyone.”

  Her voice cracked on the last words. For a moment neither of them spoke. They just shared a look while the baby cried, and the thin, wheezing hum of the generator struggling to stay on carried through the hospital.

  Lilly turned her gaze back to the page, hands trembling as she searched for some line she might have missed. Nothing. The words she’d already read just hung in the air like smoke.

  Parenthood had been dropped into their arms in a woven basket on a hospital floor.

  They had never planned to be parents. They were supposed to be passing through, doctors on a project. A blind child in rural Guatemala was not a life they wanted for him. With doctors, he would have a chance, they told themselves.

  At least, that was the reason they clung to later.