She opened the door.
The apartment was a furnace. No central air, just a box fan barely pushing breath through the humidity. It smelled like old frying oil and Lysol. A baby cried somewhere in the back room. The blinds were yellowed with age.
The woman was maybe thirty. Tired. Thin. Dressed in scrubs that looked second-hand. She carried herself like someone who’d spent too many years fending off promises and waiting for rent extensions.
“You got ID?” she asked.
I handed over my license. She glanced at it, then tossed it on a plastic folding table. The wordVeteranwas stamped clean across the bottom, just under the photo. I'd been a medic once, back when uniforms and orders ruled my life. Maybe that’s why helping injured people felt like second nature now—like the one part of me that still made sense.
“Let me see what you wanna see,” she said.
I knelt in front of the boy. “What’s your name?”
“Tyrese.”
“All right, Tyrese. You mind if I take a look?”
He shrugged. “Guess not.”
I rolled up the leg of his shorts. Felt along the shin. Bone alignment was off. A jagged ridge mid-tibia. The limp made sense now. It had never been set right. No cast, no pins. Just healed crooked.
“You broke it clean?” I asked.
“Snapped,” he said. “Felt it pop.”
“You ever go in for it?”
“Urgent care gave me Tylenol. Said to wrap it and stay off it. We ain’t have money for nothin’ more.”
I nodded. “Still hurts?”
“Only when it rains.”
I smiled, even though I didn’t want to. “That’s real Southern of you.”
He grinned a little.
I looked up at his mother. “I know a guy. Pediatric ortho. He’s out of Charlotte, but he takes my calls. He’ll fix it right—plates, clean-up, rehab. All covered.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And I’m supposed to believe that?”
I stood. “You don’t have to. But I’m giving you the number anyway.”
I scribbled it on the back of a receipt and handed it over.
“And this—” I pulled a stack of folded bills from my back pocket. “—is for groceries. Or rent. Or whatever else needs fixin’.”
She took it, but didn’t unfold it. Just stared.
“This some kind of scam?”
“No, ma’am.”
“You want something later?”
“No.”
“You gon’ come back askin’ for favors?”
