“David, please stay with me,” I cried, pressing my hands gently against him like I could hold his life in place.
A stranger wiped his face with a scarf. Another checked his pulse. A tricycle rider stopped and shouted, “We have to take him now!”
I climbed in with David, holding him close.
During the ride, I prayed out loud without caring who heard.
“God, please. Please save him. Please don’t let him die.”
At the hospital, nurses rushed out with a stretcher. They took him inside. I tried to follow, but they stopped me outside the emergency room.
I paced the hallway like an animal trapped in fear.
My mother arrived, breathless, and held me. “He will live,” she said firmly. “Breathe, my daughter.”
Minutes felt like hours. When the door finally opened, a nurse asked for the person who brought the boy.
“That’s me,” I said.
“He needs treatment immediately,” she said. “Internal injuries. We need procedures and scans. Please go to billing.”
I walked to the counter, still shaking.
The man behind the desk typed and turned the screen toward me.
The amount on the screen was the exact amount I had saved for three years.
My modeling dream. My box of hope.
My stomach dropped. My throat tightened.
I stepped away and leaned against the wall, torn in half.
One side of me saw the future I had worked for slipping away. The other side saw David lying on a stretcher, alone in the world, fighting to breathe.
I closed my eyes.
I remembered him sweeping my shop. Smiling shyly. Saying thank you like it was a prayer.
I remembered the empty building.
