Chapter 1 - THE SECOND RESCUE
Arthur Vance didn't think; he simply reacted. Twenty-five years of hauling freight across the icy highways of the Midwest had taught him how to handle emergencies, but nothing prepared him for the sight of the young mother dying on a filthy linoleum floor.
He dropped to his knees, his heavy work boots thudding against the rotting wood of the mobile home. The baby—a tiny, fragile boy wrapped in a faded towel—was screaming, his face red with the cold. Elena was barely conscious, her skin burning with a severe fever. The empty bottle of antibiotics told the whole story: a post-delivery infection, and no money for a refill.
"Elena," Arthur said, his deep voice rumbling as he scooped the infant into one arm and slid his other under her shoulders. "I've got you. Stay with me."
"The bills," she hallucinated, her head lolling against his chest. "He took everything. He said we deserved to freeze."
"Nobody is freezing today," Arthur growled.
He kicked the broken door wide open and carried them both through the freezing Ohio wind to his massive rig parked at the edge of the gravel road. He cranked the cab's heater to the maximum, settled Elena into the sleeper berth, and placed the wailing infant on her chest.
As Arthur climbed into the driver’s seat, his phone rang. It was the trucking dispatcher. "Vance, you're four hours late on the drop. The boss says if you aren't at the dock in twenty minutes, you're fired, and you forfeit your pension."
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Arthur looked back at the shivering mother and child in his cab. He thought of his own wife and daughter, lost to a drunk driver two decades ago—a loss that had turned him into a solitary ghost haunting the interstate.
"Tell the boss to go to hell," Arthur said. He crushed the phone in his massive hand, threw it out the window, and shifted the huge rig into gear, tearing down the dirt road toward the nearest emergency room.
