I removed the patch with forceps and read the name printed in the corner.

I will not print it here, and it does not matter, except for one fact about it that mattered more than anything else in the world in that moment: the compound it delivered contained the one substance on earth that this particular woman could not survive.

Twenty years earlier, that same woman had nearly died after receiving even a trace of that active ingredient.

Her allergy to it was catastrophic, absolute — the kind that turns a milligram into a death sentence.