Then he said, “Twenty-two dollars was what I had. I sold my truck in November. That’s my brother’s truck out there.”

“I know.”

“So what’s it cost?”

“The X-ray’s on us tonight. There’s a fund,” I said. “It’s new. It’s got money in it. And the children’s hospital has a program I’m going to walk you through personally, and I’m going to make the referral call myself tomorrow morning at eight, and I’m going to keep making it until somebody picks up.”

He let me in.

Zaya’s mass turned out to be an osteoid osteoma. It is benign. It is painful and it is treatable and she had it ablated in April and by June she was running.