July 10th, 2026. A sweltering Friday in Georgia. Taji lay on his worn mattress, staring at the ceiling. The cold metal fragments lodged in him a decade ago had finally begun to burrow deeper. Under the sterile glare of the operating room, doctors meticulously scraped away the shards embedded in his very bones. Two weeks of agony due to lack of insurance, a week spent in a crisis center without proper psychiatric follow-up – all those memories swirled and clawed at his mind.