I was tired. My back was already screaming from a twelve-hour shift.

But I knew one of the names on that list.

It was Martha Gable. She lived at the very top of Cedar Hill.

She was seventy-six, a brittle diabetic who needed her insulin twice a day. Her daughter had called the clinic before the lines went dead. Martha’s supply had spoiled when her refrigerator lost power.

Cedar Hill is a steep, twisting two-mile road.

No vehicle could get up it. Even the salt trucks had slid into the ditch at the bottom.

I remember looking at my white Orthofeet shoes in the locker room. I had just bought them two weeks prior.

I wrapped the small glass vial of insulin in a warm washcloth. I tucked it deep into my inner coat pocket, right against my ribs, so my body heat would keep it from freezing.

Then I walked out the clinic doors into the dark.

The wind was howling. It felt like needles throwing themselves against my cheeks.

The climb up Cedar Hill was pure hell.

The road was a mirror of ice. I had to walk in the ditch, pulling myself up by the frozen weeds and the low branches of the scrub oaks.

My left shoe split on a sharp piece of jagged ice near the half-mile mark. After that, every step made a loud, wet squeak.

Squeak. Slide. Squeak.

I fell twice. The second time, I barked my shin against a hidden boulder. I didn’t feel the pain until the next morning, but I remember the sick feeling in my stomach when I thought the vial had broken.

I reached into my coat. The washcloth was still warm. The glass was whole.

I kept going.

It took me nearly three hours to walk those two miles.

When I finally reached the little green house at the top of the hill, there were no lights.

The windows were dark and thick with frost.

I banged on the heavy oak door with my frozen flashlight.

My hands were so numb I could barely feel the plastic grip.

The door opened.

It was a boy. He was thin, maybe fourteen years old. He was wearing three winter coats, one on top of the other, and his teeth were chattering so hard I could hear them from the porch.

“My grandma,” he whispered.

The house was freezing. You could see your own breath inside the living room.

Martha was lying on the sofa under five heavy wool blankets. She was barely conscious. Her skin was gray, sticky with cold sweat, and her breathing sounded like gravel sliding inside a tin can.

I did not ask questions. I did not complain about the walk.

I just pulled the vial from my coat. My fingers were so stiff I could barely draw the medicine into the plastic syringe.

I gave her the shot.

Then I sat on the floor next to that sofa for four hours.