It was one physician, Dr.

Sandoval, who read an ordinary-seeming request to certify a stranger’s madness and felt something turn in his stomach, and who chose to lose his job rather than sign his name to it.

There are quiet, unglamorous refusals that hold a whole life up, and I owe mine to one of them.

My own folder, when Javier showed it to me, held my full name, my medical license number, and a photograph taken of me at that gala — before Dario had ever introduced himself.

Beneath it he had typed a short, tidy summary: Ideal candidate.