At the clinic gate, a 7-year-old collapsed, crying, “Mommy has been sleeping for three days, please save them.” The doctor rushed to help the newborn twins, but as he lifted them, his hands shook. Underneath the babies was a handwritten note from the mother that made the doctor freeze in terror…
him from twenty yards away—the unmistakable stench of biological decay and profound abandonment.
He pushed aside the filthy hanging cloth that served as our front door. The interior was steeped in gloom, cut only by sharp blades of evening light piercing the broken planks. The buzzing of the flies was a deafening roar in the confined space.
