After wrestling with the turmoil inside his chest, Felix found himself retracing his steps to the hospital. He had tried to walk away — tried to forget the look in her eyes, the silence that screamed louder than any cry for help. But something deeper, something unexplainable, kept pulling him back. Maybe it was the way she sat so still, so quiet, as if life had taught her that speaking only brought more pain. Maybe it was the fact that no child should ever have to look that empty.
He stood by the doorway for a moment, watching her. A fragile little girl, no older than seven or eight, curled up on the hospital bed like a forgotten doll. She didn't even turn her head to look at him.
With slow steps, he approached her. "Hey... can you tell me your name?" His voice was gentle, almost a whisper, like he was afraid he might break her further if he spoke too loudly.
She didn't respond.
He tried again. "I want to help you. But I need to know who you are."
Still, nothing. Her eyes stared down at her hands, folded tightly in her lap. Minutes ticked by, slow and silent. Just when he thought she wouldn't say anything, her lips moved ever so slightly. A sound, barely audible, escaped her mouth — a series of digits.
Felix leaned in, repeating the numbers to himself, realizing… it was a phone number. She wasn't telling him her name. She was giving him someone. Someone who mattered. Someone who could speak for her when she couldn't.
He stepped outside the ward, heart thudding, and dialed the number.
"Hello? Hello? Who is this? Sorry, the number's not saved — I don't usually answer unknown calls."
Her voice was cautious, tinged with the accent of someone who had spent years far away.
Felix cleared his throat. "I'm calling from a hospital. There's a little girl here. She gave me your number."
The silence on the line was deafening. Then came a trembling voice.
"My sister?"
Felix nodded, though she couldn't see him. "She didn't say much. Just gave me this number. She seems scared… like she hasn't known kindness for a long time."
The woman on the phone inhaled sharply. "Oh my God. Is she okay? What happened? I… I thought she was with our dad. I trusted him."
Felix heard the tremor in her voice. It was the sound of heartbreak — of years of guilt crashing down all at once.
She told him everything. About how she had gone abroad to study, chasing her dreams with a fire in her heart — not just for herself, but for her little sister too. Their mother had died when they were young. Their father had remarried a woman who never wanted children, especially not someone else's. Her little sister had been left in that house like an unwanted guest, treated with cold indifference, day after day.
And now this. A hospital bed. A broken child.
Felix felt a tightness in his throat. The kind that comes when you realize the world isn't fair — and never will be — unless someone decides to make it a little better.
Maybe that someone was him.
Maybe he hadn't found the girl. Maybe God had sent her to find him.
For years, Felix had lived with a hollow place in his chest, a sorrow that clung to him no matter how much good he tried to do. But now, standing outside that ward, he realized that helping her — protecting her — might be the only way to fill that space inside himself.
She needed a shield. A voice. A chance.
And he would be all of that.
He looked through the glass window at the little girl, still silent, still small… but not alone anymore.
"I'm not going to let anything happen to her," he promised the sister on the phone — and maybe also to himself.
Not now. Not ever