The hospital gave him 72 hours and a number so impossible it nearly destroyed him.
A poor black teenager with only $6 in his pocket stopped in the pouring rain to help a sick old man everyone else ignored. People laughed at him. Some told him to mind his own business. But Jamal Carter bent down, picked up six fallen grocery bags, and carried them three miles across Chicago.What he didn't know was that the frail stranger walking beside him was hiding a secret powerful enough to change his life forever. Within days, Jamal would face heartbreak, betrayal, false accusations, and a desperate race to save his grandmother's life. And the only person who could help him was the very man he had helped without expecting anything in return.The rain came down hard over Southside Chicago, turning the grocery store parking lot into a gray sheet of water and oil-stained puddles. Headlights smeared across the wet pavement. Shopping carts rattled in the wind. A bus hissed at the stop across the street, its doors folding open and shut while tired people climbed aboard with their collars pulled high and their eyes fixed on the ground.Jamal Carter stood under the narrow awning beside Greenway Market, watching the rain drip from the torn edge of his jacket. He was 18 years old, though most days he felt much older. His left shoe had a split across the sole, and every time he shifted his weight, cold water squeezed through his sock. His stomach had been empty since morning, except for half a roll he had saved from the community kitchen. In his pocket were $6, folded twice and held together by a rubber band. That money was not for food; it was for bus fare and his grandmother's medicine copay if the pharmacy gave him trouble again.He looked toward the bus stop, then back at the grocery store doors. If he ran, he could still make the next bus home. If he missed it, he would have to walk almost 40 minutes through rain and traffic, and Grandma Gloria would start worrying. She always tried to hide it, but he knew the sound of her worry: it lived in the way she cleared her throat too often, in the way she checked the clock, in the way she smiled too brightly when he finally came through the door.Jamal pulled his hood tighter and stepped away from the wall.That was when he heard the cough.