As soon as Daniel entered the busy hospital, the life he had left behind rose before him. The hospital was tiny compared to the large, frenzied, nonstop world of Chicago Medical Center. Still, the similarities were there—the sharp, insistent smell of alcohol and antiseptic, the anxious voices of people pushing for information, the crowded waiting room filled with the worried and the restless. The coughing, sneezing, moaning sounds of the sick brought Daniel right back to those long, sleepless hours of his internship and the hectic years of his residency. Several fans spun the warm air above the reception area as he waited to speak to the nurse behind the desk. Daniel began to sweat, dizzy from the heat and the noise, along with the shameful reminder that it was the first morning in months that the little girl hadn’t haunted his thoughts from the moment he woke. Before Daniel left Chicago, he wanted to visit the little girl, but instead stood outside her hospital room door and couldn’t bring himself to enter when he heard murmuring voices, someone singing a nursery rhyme in which he recognized the melody but couldn’t make out the words. What kind of doctor was he, unable to face up to his own mistake? He closed his eyes and swallowed the sourness rising up to his throat. He didn’t want his mistake to become a rash that would never go away, so it became just one more reason to leave rather than cause any more problems for the hospital.

“You okay?” the nurse seated behind the front desk asked.

Daniel opened his eyes again, saw her questioning gaze as he stepped forward, then saw past her to the glint of the shiny chair in the hallway behind her.

* * *

By the time Daniel left Hilo Hospital, he’d been able to accomplish much more than he had hoped for. His first moments there were focused on trying to catch his anxious breaths and breathe normally so he wouldn’t faint. But as soon as he saw the wheelchair in the hallway, he began to focus again, knowing it was exactly what Mama needed. He’d been able to bypass the bureaucracy, not only by telling the administrator he was a mainland-trained local boy who was returning to open his own practice—a lie that came to him too quickly to be completely false; but also because the wheelchair was for his patient, Mama Natua, who was beloved by the community.