About twenty minutes after I ended the call, a pair of headlights washed across the rain-streaked front windows of my clinic. A black SUV eased to the curb beside the mailbox and stopped.
By then, Noah was asleep on the cot behind me, one hand tucked beneath his cheek and the other resting close to his head as if sleep itself still required protection.
The grocery bag he had carried through the rain sat beside the exam table.
Inside were twelve dollars, two crushed cans, and three empty soda bottles with peeling labels.
That was all he had brought to pay for a broken leg.
And somehow, that was the least frightening thing I had learned that evening.
A little more than an hour earlier, I had been preparing to close my neighborhood clinic after a long, wet day.
The kind of day when the floor never quite dried near the entrance, coffee stayed too long on the warmer, and everyone who came through the door seemed tired before they even sat down.
I was checking what still needed to be put away when I noticed a small figure standing in the doorway.
He was soaked.
