The girl looked at him, her face pale and streaked with tears that had already begun to dry in the cold air. For a second, she didn’t speak, as if she were trying to decide whether he was real, whether he was someone she could believe in. Then her lip trembled, and in a voice so small it almost disappeared into the wind, she said, “Sir… my mommy won’t wake up. I tried and tried.”
The words landed harder than anything Daniel had heard in years.
There was something about the way she said it—not dramatic, not panicked, just tired and confused—that cut straight through him, bypassing logic and training and going straight to something more human, something he had spent a long time trying not to feel.
“What’s your name?” he asked, keeping his tone steady.
“Maya,” she whispered.
