The night was heavy with silence, broken only by the restless rustle of dry leaves carried by the wind. On the edge of the small town, far beyond the market stalls and mud houses, stood the old refuse hill—known by the locals as Dong Hill. It was a place no one lingered after dark, a dumping ground for broken pots, rotting food, and secrets too shameful to bury anywhere else.
On that particular night, a secret was laid there—a secret wrapped in a blood-stained cloth, trembling against the cold.
The baby cried.
Her thin voice pierced the darkness, rising and falling with desperation, a sound that carried into the distance like a wound refusing to close. The wind seemed to hush in pity. A dog barked somewhere far off, startled by the sound, but no one came immediately. To the world, Dong Hill was cursed. To the baby, it was home—the first she would know.
Hours passed before footsteps echoed on the path leading from the town. An old woman, bent with years and carrying a woven basket of scraps, paused at the edge of the hill. She thought she heard something. A kitten, perhaps? She shook her head and muttered to herself.
But then, the cry rose again—weak, almost broken.
The woman gasped, clutching her wrapper tighter around her frail body. "God have mercy," she whispered. Moving closer, she saw the bundle lying amidst the waste. Her heart lurched. She set her basket down and bent carefully, her wrinkled hands trembling as she reached for the child.
The baby was cold, her lips turning blue, but she was alive. Alive.
The old woman's eyes burned with tears as she pulled the child against her chest. She glanced around the shadows as though the parents might be lurking somewhere, ashamed but watching. But there was no one. Only the wind, only the hill, only the baby.
"Forsaken child," she murmured. "Yet still breathing."
When she brought the baby to the gates of St. Brigid's Orphanage, the caretakers stared in horror. The orphanage was already overcrowded with children who bore scars of abandonment, but none had arrived from Dong Hill before. To them, this child was cursed, dirtier than the trash she had been found in.
Sister Agnes, the matron, frowned at the bundle. "From the hill? No good thing comes from there."
Still, she took the child in, writing her name in the orphanage ledger: Adanna, meaning "daughter of her father." It was a cruel irony, since no father had claimed her, but Sister Agnes insisted the name stay.
And so, Adanna's story began.
The years at St. Brigid's were not kind.
The building was gray, its walls flaking paint, its corridors echoing with children's cries. The caretakers provided food, yes, but only enough to keep the children alive. Love was scarce, like gold hidden beneath dirt. To be an orphan here meant learning to fight for every spoonful, every scrap of attention, every shred of dignity.
From the earliest days, Adanna learned that she was different—not only because she was an orphan, but because of where she had been found. The others taunted her, chanting, "Hill Child, Hill Child, thrown away like waste!" Their voices echoed in the dormitory, sharp as stones. She would cover her ears, curl into her thin blanket, and wish she could vanish.
But vanishing was impossible. She was alive. And something in her—something stubborn and fierce—refused to let the name "Hill Child" be the end of her story.
One evening, when she was about six, Adanna crept into the orphanage library. The room smelled of dust and forgotten dreams. Shelves sagged with old, torn books—donations from kind strangers long gone. She pulled one at random. The cover was cracked, but inside were drawings of the human body: the heart, the lungs, the bones.
She didn't understand the words, but the pictures fascinated her. Here were people drawn from the inside out, as though their secrets had been revealed. She traced the outline of the heart with her finger, whispering the word written beneath: Cardio.
For the first time in her short life, she felt a spark—not of pain or shame, but of curiosity.
That night, when the children slept, Adanna lit a stub of candle she had hidden beneath her bed. She opened the book again, eyes wide with hunger—not for food, but for knowledge. The words were strange, but slowly, painfully, she began to piece them together.
It was the beginning of a love that would one day shape her destiny.
Still, destiny was far away. Pain was near.
By the time she was eight, Adanna had learned how cruel Sister Agnes could be. The matron believed hardship built strength, so she doled out punishment freely. A missed chore meant kneeling on bare gravel for hours. A lost spoon meant going without food for a day.
Adanna bore it silently. But silence only made her more of a target for the other children. They stole her scraps, mocked her clothes, whispered about the cursed hill.
One day, after a fight over a slice of bread, Adanna sat alone under the guava tree behind the orphanage. Tears blurred her vision. "Why was I born?" she whispered. "Why didn't they just let me die?"
The answer came not in words, but in a memory—of the old woman's trembling hands lifting her from the dirt. Of Sister Agnes writing her name in the book. Of the heart drawing in her library book, beating despite everything.
Maybe she didn't know why she was alive. But she was. And that was enough.
That night, Adanna made herself a promise.
One day, she would leave St. Brigid's. One day, she would rise higher than the hill she had been left on. One day, she would matter.
She did not know how, but she believed it fiercely, clutching the tattered medical book to her chest like a shield.
As she drifted into sleep, a storm gathered outside, shaking the old building. Lightning split the sky, thunder roared, and the rain came in sheets. In the darkness, Sister Agnes moved through the dormitory, checking beds. When she reached Adanna's, she paused, watching the girl cling to the book even in her dreams.
The matron's lips curved into a thin smile. "Dream, Hill Child," she whispered. "Dream. But know this: dreams are the cruelest lies of all."
And with that, she turned away, leaving Adanna asleep, her destiny waiting in the storm.
The storm raged through the night, and by morning, the orphanage looked battered, its roof leaking in several places. Sister Agnes barked orders for the children to fetch buckets, sweep the water, and scrub the mud that had seeped into the hallways.
Adanna moved quickly, though her arms ached from exhaustion. She carried the smallest bucket—half-cracked and leaking—but she carried it faithfully, spilling less than many of the others. She never complained. Complaints, she had learned, earned a slap across the mouth or worse.
As she worked, she heard the other girls giggling behind her.
"Look at her," one sneered, "the Hill Child scrubbing like the trash she came from."
Adanna kept her head low, but her fists tightened around the bucket's handle. She wanted to scream, to tell them she hadn't chosen her beginning. But no words came.
Later, when the chores were done and Sister Agnes allowed them a brief rest, Adanna sat by the broken window, gazing out at the dripping trees. Raindrops clung to the leaves like tiny jewels. For a moment, the world outside looked beautiful—something pure beyond the gray walls that caged her.
She whispered to herself, "One day, I'll leave here. One day, I'll find where I belong."
But she didn't notice Sister Agnes standing in the doorway, listening.
The matron's gaze was cold. In her youth, she had believed in dreams too. She had thought herself destined for something grander than raising abandoned children. But dreams had betrayed her, and so she had decided: better to crush hope early than let it rot later.
"Adanna!" she barked.
The girl jumped to her feet, heart pounding.
"Yes, Sister."
"You were found on a heap of filth. Never forget that." The matron's eyes narrowed. "Children like you must learn humility. Dreams are for those born with names and homes, not for orphans carried in on the wind."
The words struck harder than a whip, but Adanna swallowed the lump in her throat. She bowed her head and whispered, "Yes, Sister."
Inside, though, something rebelled. If dreams were lies, then she would prove them true.
That night, she returned to the library. The storm had stopped, leaving the air damp and smelling of earth. By candlelight, she opened the old medical book again. The picture of the heart seemed to glow at her, alive on the page. She traced it with her finger and whispered, "I'll learn all your secrets. And one day, I'll fix hearts like mine."
From then on, the library became her sanctuary. Whenever she could steal a moment, she read—biology, anatomy, even scraps of old newspapers about hospitals and doctors. She couldn't understand everything, but she tried. Each new word was a weapon against the shame of being unwanted.
Years passed. Adanna grew taller, her features sharper, her eyes brighter. But the taunts never stopped.
"Hill Child."
"Trash Baby."
"Unwanted."
Each word was meant to wound, and sometimes they did. But more often, they hardened her resolve. She began to realize that survival wasn't just about enduring pain—it was about transforming it.
One afternoon, when she was about ten, she found herself in the courtyard after chores. The boys were playing rough, kicking an old rag ball. One tripped and fell, scraping his knee badly against the gravel. Blood gushed, and the boy wailed.
The other children panicked, but Adanna knelt quickly beside him. She remembered a page she had studied about wounds.
"Bring water!" she shouted. When no one moved, she grabbed a rusty can herself, poured it over the wound, and tore a strip from her already torn dress. She pressed it firmly on the bleeding knee.
The boy stopped crying, eyes wide with surprise.
"You… you helped me," he whispered.
Adanna only nodded, her heart pounding. She wasn't sure she had done it correctly, but she knew this: for the first time, she had turned her knowledge into action. For the first time, she had made a difference.
From the corner of the yard, Sister Agnes watched silently. Her face revealed nothing, but inside she thought, This one is stubborn. She will not break easily.
That night, lying in bed, Adanna replayed the moment in her mind. The boy's grateful eyes, the strange calm she had felt even with blood staining her hands. A seed was planted, deep and unshakable.
She whispered into the darkness, "I will be a doctor. No matter what it takes."
The words felt dangerous, as though saying them aloud might invite punishment. But they also felt like a vow, carved into her very bones.
Life at the orphanage only grew harder as the years went by. Food became scarcer, punishments harsher. Many children gave up hope, growing wild or bitter. Some ran away and never returned.
But Adanna clung to her dream as if it were a lifeline. She studied whenever she could, memorizing not just the books but the world around her—the plants that healed, the herbs the cooks used for fevers, the way the human body responded to pain.
Still, the ridicule never stopped. One evening, after another round of insults, she sat alone under the guava tree again, tears streaming down her face.
"Why me?" she whispered. "Why did they throw me away? Why am I still here?"
The wind rustled the leaves above her, as if offering no answer but presence.
And yet, deep within her chest, she felt it again—the same stubborn spark that had carried her through hunger, loneliness, and shame. She could not explain it, but she knew: her life was not an accident. It was unfinished.
At twelve, she entered a local scholarship exam. Sister Agnes almost didn't allow her to sit for it, but a visiting priest insisted every child should have the chance.
Adanna sat in the classroom, her hands shaking over the paper. The questions were difficult, but she remembered the nights under candlelight, the words she had forced herself to learn. She wrote with fierce concentration.
Weeks later, when the results came, the orphanage buzzed with disbelief.
Adanna had come first.
Her prize: a scholarship to a boarding secondary school in the city.
The day she packed her few belongings, the other children watched in silence. Some with envy, some with awe. Sister Agnes, expression unreadable, handed her the old cloth she had been wrapped in as a baby.
"Take it," the matron said. "One day, you will want to know where you came from. And when you do, may the truth not destroy you."
Adanna clutched the cloth to her chest, heart trembling. She didn't understand what Sister Agnes meant, but she felt a chill.
Still, as the orphanage gates closed behind her for the first time, she whispered to herself:
"This is the beginning. I will not be forsaken forever."
The bus to the city was crowded, its metal frame rattling with every bump along the dusty road. Adanna sat by the window, clutching her small bag and the faded cloth Sister Agnes had given her. She turned it over in her hands. It was worn thin, the edges fraying, but stitched into one corner was a strange mark—half a crest, half a name, almost rubbed away by time.
She ran her fingers over it again and again, as though it might speak if she pressed hard enough.
"Do you know what that means?" the woman seated beside her asked kindly, nodding at the cloth.
Adanna shook her head quickly, hiding it back in her bag. "No, ma."
The woman smiled faintly but said nothing more.
Adanna turned back to the window, her chest tightening. She didn't know why, but something about the mark unsettled her. It felt like a shadow she couldn't escape, a reminder that no matter how far she traveled, her past would follow.
The bus rumbled on, carrying her farther from the orphanage, farther from Dong Hill, into a future she could not yet imagine. But as the countryside blurred past, her vow burned steady in her heart:
I will become a doctor. I will heal. I will matter.
Still, she could not shake Sister Agnes's final words.
"One day, you will want to know where you came from. And when you do, may the truth not destroy you."
The bus jolted suddenly, throwing her forward. Gasps filled the air. For a moment, panic swept through the passengers. But the driver steadied the wheel, muttering a curse. The bus continued as though nothing had happened.
But Adanna sat frozen, her hands clenched around the cloth.
For in that brief jolt, she had heard something—or thought she had. A whisper, soft as breath, echoing in her ears:
"You were never meant to survive."
She looked around wildly, but no one else reacted. The passengers were already settling back, shaking their heads at the reckless driver.
Adanna's heart pounded. She told herself it was imagination, a trick of her tired mind. But deep down, she knew the words were not hers.
They belonged to the shadows of her past—the parents who had left her, the hill that had nearly claimed her.
And somewhere, beyond the horizon she now approached, the truth waited like a storm.
A truth strong enough to heal.
Or to destroy.