The glass of the Uber Black was tinted so dark that the afternoon sun of Chicago looked like twilight. Inside, it smelled of artificial pine and expensive leather. I liked it that way. I liked the separation.

At thirty-four, I had everything the American Dream promised, and I had the ulcers to prove it. I was the founder of Apex Capital, a venture firm that specialized in eating small companies and turning them into mid-sized profits. Today was the day we were acquiring a logistics startup. The deal was worth forty million dollars. My cut would be substantial enough to buy another vacation home I’d never visit.

“Traffic is bad, Julian,” my driver said. He was a nice guy, usually. Today, he was just an obstacle.

“Just drive on the shoulder if you have to, Ahmed,” I snapped, not looking up from my iPad. “I’m not paying for a ride; I’m paying for time. Buy me some time.”

I was reviewing the non-compete clauses when the car lurched to a halt. Not a traffic stop. A dead stop.

“What now?” I groaned, finally looking up.

We were on a gritty stretch of road, just a few blocks from the polished steel of the Loop, but worlds away in reality. The sidewalk was crowded. Not the usual bustle of commuters, but a static, circular crowd. The kind that forms around a fight or an accident.

“Looks like trouble,” Ahmed muttered, reaching for the door lock button to ensure we were sealed in. “Best to stay back.”

I watched through the window. People were holding their phones up. High. The universal salute of the modern voyeur. They weren’t calling 911. They were framing the shot.

Then, through a gap in the legs of a heavy-set man in a construction vest, I saw her.

She was tiny. Maybe seven years old. She was wearing a pink dress that was meant for summer, completely inadequate for the biting November wind. Her knees were gray with sidewalk grit.

She wasn’t fighting. She wasn’t dancing. She was on her knees, hunched over something on the ground.

I pressed my face against the cold glass.

The girl threw her head back and screamed. The sound didn’t penetrate the heavy insulation of the SUV, but the visual was enough to stop my heart. It was a scream of absolute, shattering desperation. Her face was red, her mouth wide, her neck cords straining.

Then, she slammed her hands down.

One. Two. Three.

She paused. Put her ear to the ground.

She slammed her hands down again.

“Is she…” My voice trailed off. My brain refused to process it. It looked like she was playing with a doll. But the urgency was too real. The way she wiped her nose on her shoulder and immediately went back to pumping.

“Ahmed,” I said. “What is she doing?”

“Crazy kids,” Ahmed said, shaking his head. “Parents are probably high somewhere nearby. Sad.”

“No,” I whispered. I saw the bundle shift. A tiny, limp arm flopped out from the blanket. It was pale. “That’s a baby. That’s a human baby.”

A teenager in the crowd laughed at something his friend said, pointing his phone camera closer to the girl.

Something inside me snapped. It wasn’t a heroic impulse. It was rage. A pure, white-hot fury at the glass, the leather, the meeting, and the fifty people standing on that sidewalk doing absolutely nothing.

“Unlock the door,” I commanded.

“Sir, the police will handle—”

“UNLOCK IT!” I screamed, my voice cracking.

Ahmed flinched and hit the button.

I didn’t wait. I shoved the door open and the noise of the city rushed in—honking horns, the rumble of a bus, and the high-pitched, rhythmic wailing of a child begging God for a miracle.

I hit the ground running, stumbling slightly in my dress shoes. The cold air bit through my suit jacket, but I didn’t feel it. I felt like I was moving through molasses, every second stretching out into an hour.

I reached the back of the crowd.

“Move!” I shouted.

Nobody turned. They were entranced by their screens.

“Worldstar, baby,” someone muttered.

I grabbed the shoulder of the man in the construction vest and yanked him backward. He stumbled, turning to swing at me, but stopped when he saw the look on my face. Or maybe he saw the suit and realized suing me would be a hassle.

I pushed through the inner circle.

The girl was right there. Up close, the scene was a nightmare in high definition. She was chanting, her voice raspy and broken.

“Stay with me, stay with me, breathe, Benny, breathe.”

The baby—Benny—was small. Maybe six months old. He wasn’t moving. His skin had a terrible, waxen quality to it. His lips were a dark blueberry color.

The girl looked up at me. Her eyes were enormous, framed by dirty lashes. There was no recognition of me as a person, just a desperate scan to see if I was a threat or help.

“He stopped!” she shrieked at me, drool and tears mixing on her chin. “He was coughing and then he just stopped!”

I dropped to my knees. The concrete was wet and freezing. I didn’t care about the $2,000 trousers.

“Okay,” I said. My hands were shaking. I had taken a CPR course five years ago for a corporate retreat—a box-ticking exercise between trust falls and wine tasting. I prayed the muscle memory was there. “Okay. Move your hands, honey.”

“No! I have to save him!” she cried, pushing my hand away. She was terrified that if she stopped, he would leave forever.

“I’m going to help you save him,” I said, my voice dropping to a fierce, commanding register I usually reserved for boardrooms. “Let me help. My hands are bigger.”

She hesitated, then collapsed back onto her heels, her chest heaving.

I placed my fingers on the infant’s chest. It felt impossibly fragile. Like pressing on a carton of eggs. I visualized the heart underneath.

Push. Push. Push.

“Call 911!” I bellowed at the crowd without looking up. “Put the damn phones down and call 911!”

“I… I already did,” a woman whispered, looking ashamed, lowering her phone. “They said they’re five minutes out.”

Five minutes. Five minutes was a lifetime. Five minutes was the difference between brain damage and a funeral.

“Come on, Benny,” I grunted.

I tilted his head back slightly. I covered his tiny nose and mouth with my mouth and gave two puffs of air. I tasted sour milk and dust. His chest rose.

Good. Airway isn’t totally blocked.

I went back to compressions.

The girl, whose name I didn’t even know, crawled over to me. She wrapped her arms around my bicep, burying her face in the wool of my suit. I could feel her trembling against me.

“Is he dead?” she whispered into my sleeve. “Is Benny dead?”

“No,” I lied. I didn’t know. He felt dead. He felt like a doll. “Keep talking to him. He needs to hear you.”

“Benny!” she screamed, right into his ear. “It’s Sarah! You can’t sleep! We have to go to the park! Wake up!”

The raw agony in her voice cut me deeper than any insult, any failure, any heartbreak I had ever experienced.

Suddenly, the baby jerked.

It was a spasm. A violent arch of the back.

“Whoa,” I gasped.

Then, a sound. A horrible, wet, hacking cough. Vomit erupted from the baby’s mouth—clear liquid and mucus.

I quickly turned him to his side. “Get it out, get it out.”

He coughed again. Then, a high, thin wail pierced the air. It was weak, but it was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.

“He’s crying!” Sarah screamed, clutching my arm so hard her fingernails dug in. “He’s crying!”

The crowd let out a collective breath. I heard a few people clapping. Clapping? Like this was a show?

The adrenaline crashed. My vision swam. I sat back on my heels, gasping for air, my hands covered in baby vomit and street grime.

The sirens, finally, became deafening. The red lights washed over the gray concrete, painting us all in blood-colored flashes.

Two paramedics burst through the crowd. Professional. Fast. They scooped Benny up.

“Who’s the guardian?” one of them asked, looking around.

Sarah stood up, looking small and fierce. “Me. Just me.”

The paramedic looked at me. “You the dad?”

I looked at Sarah. She was shivering violently now that the adrenaline was fading. She looked at the ambulance, then at me, terrified of being separated from her brother, terrified of the system, terrified of being alone.

“I’m…” I started to say ‘nobody.’

Then Sarah grabbed my hand. Her fingers were ice cold.

“He’s with us,” Sarah said, looking the paramedic in the eye with a lie that saved her.

I looked at my watch. The meeting had started ten minutes ago. My phone was buzzing in my pocket. The deal of a lifetime.

I looked at Sarah’s hand in mine.

“Yeah,” I said, squeezing her hand back. “I’m with them. I’m riding along.”