Hannah Blake was kneeling on the restroom floor of a twelve-story office building, scrubbing tiles during her early morning cleaning shift when the phone in her pocket vibrated. She glanced at the clock. It was five in the morning.

No one called at that hour unless something was wrong.

Her chest tightened when she saw the daycare’s number.

The teacher’s voice sounded distant and mechanical, as if she were reading from a script. Hannah’s eight-month-old daughter Sophie had developed a high fever during the night. The baby couldn’t stop coughing, and the daycare couldn’t keep a sick child. Hannah needed to pick her up immediately.

Before she could respond, the call ended.

Hannah jumped to her feet and rushed out of the building without even informing her supervisor. Snow whipped through the streets, stinging her face like needles as she ran.

She ran three blocks because she couldn’t afford a taxi.

By the time she reached the daycare, her lips were numb and her legs trembled from the cold.

Sophie lay in the teacher’s arms, her tiny face flushed with fever. Her weak cries sounded like a helpless kitten.

Hannah gathered her daughter into her arms, feeling the burning heat of the fever through the baby’s thin clothes.

She carried Sophie back to their tiny rented room in a run-down Brooklyn apartment building.

The room was barely ten square meters. The walls were stained with damp patches, and the cracked window had been taped shut. The heater had stopped working two weeks earlier.

Hannah laid Sophie on the bed and searched the medicine cabinet.

Empty.

The last bottle of fever medicine had been used the week before. She hadn’t had the money to buy more.

Tears rolled down her face as she watched her daughter struggle with fever.

Her phone vibrated again. This time it was her cleaning company.

Her manager’s voice was sharp and furious.

Where was she? Why had she abandoned her shift?

Hannah tried explaining about Sophie’s fever and begged for a day off.

The manager cut her off immediately.

There was a special assignment that day—a wealthy client in a mansion on the Upper West Side. If Hannah didn’t show up, she would lose her job.

Hannah wanted to scream.

But if she lost the job, there would be no rent money, no milk for Sophie, no medicine.

And worse, her violent ex-husband Ryan, who had been searching for her across the city, would find her more easily if she ended up homeless.