Chapter 1
The hallway smelled like cold air and floor cleaner and it hummed too loud. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead in white ceiling tiles and threw everything into that flat hospital white. I stood outside my mom's room with my hands jammed in the pockets of my coral t-shirt and watched the doctor move down the corridor like he owned the clock. His white coat swung open over blue scrubs and the black stethoscope with the silver chestpiece bounced against his chest with each step. He didn't look at me at first because I was small and against the wall and easy to walk past, but I had been counting his rounds. He was at peak rush, chart in hand, nurse trailing, everyone waiting for him to turn into the next room.
That was the contradiction I couldn't understand then. He looked like the man who was supposed to fix everything, calm and serious in a place that was supposed to fix people, and at the same time the paper taped to my mom's door said we couldn't stay unless we paid. Fifty thousand rupees. I'd heard the woman at the desk say it twice like it was nothing. I had nothing in my pockets except a folded hospital receipt and a phone with a cracked screen that was still recording.
My name is Arjun and I was seven that afternoon in the corridor outside Room 214.
It was just after lunch. The lunch trays had come and gone and the ice in my mom's water cup had melted. The nurse had told me to wait in the hall while they checked her vitals. I stood under the fluorescent lights with my back against the wall where the paint was scuffed from beds rolling by. I could hear the soft beep of the monitor from inside her room. I saw the doctor coming from the far end, his coat clean, his hair short and brown, his stethoscope centered on his chest. I stepped into his path before I could talk myself out of it. I looked up and my throat went dry and I had to swallow twice.
He slowed. He saw my face. I didn't cry yet but my eyes were already watery and my mouth wouldn't stay closed. I stared at the silver chestpiece on his stethoscope because it was easier than looking straight into his eyes.
"Doctor, please help my mom," I said. My voice cracked on please. I said it exactly the way I'd practiced it in my head for an hour.
He didn't keep walking. He kneeled. One knee down so we were eye level, his coat pooling a little, his scrubs creasing at the knee. Up close I could see the small lines at the corners of his eyes and the way he breathed slow and even. The stethoscope swung forward as he leaned in and settled against his blue shirt.
"Her treatment will cost 50,000 rupees," I said. The words came out smaller this time. "I don't have any money."
He looked at me for a long second. He didn't flinch at the number. He nodded once, like he'd heard it a hundred times that week.
"Don't worry," he said. His voice was low and calm and serious, not unkind. He glanced past me toward the phone propped on the plastic chair where its red light blinked. "Tell the viewers to like, follow, and share this video, then I will help your mother."
I didn't understand right away if he meant the people beyond the phone or if he was testing me. My eyes burned. I thought of my mom behind the door, her hand taped with the IV.
"Please like, follow, and share, please, please, please, please," I said. I said it to the little lens and to him and to anyone who might be listening. My voice went thin on the last pleases. A tear slipped and hung on my left cheek. I didn't wipe it. I pressed my lips together to keep from sobbing out loud and my eyes stayed glassy, holding everything back.
For a breath neither of us moved. The fluorescent light made his white coat glow and made the silver on his stethoscope catch. Somewhere down the hall a cart squeaked.
Then doubt hit hard. Had I just begged the wrong way? Would he think I was just a kid messing with a phone? I felt the lie I'd told myself all morning crack — that if I just asked nicely enough, help would come without any condition.
"Is that too much to ask?" I whispered.
He didn't answer at first. He held my gaze, slow blinking once, and his mouth formed a tight, empathetic line. "You asked," he said. "Now let them answer."
Before I could say anything else a voice cut down the hallway.
May you like
"Doctor Harrison!" A nurse in navy scrubs leaned out from the station, holding a chart up. "Room 214's ready."
My stomach dropped. Room 214 was my mom's room. The door that had been closed all afternoon was now half-open, light spilling out into the corridor, the curtain inside shifting as someone moved near her bed. The doctor's name hung in the air and his pager buzzed faintly at his hip. He stayed kneeled for one more second, eyes on mine, then started to rise, his hand hovering like he wasn't sure whether to put it on my shoulder. The door inched wider.
