Late morning. Harlem Hospital. Doris White (not her real name), 32, pulls her thin robe across her narrow, bony chest and lights a cigarette. Her dark arms are riddled with small, round scars, the hieroglyphs of chronic heroin abuse. She is here for the seventh time in two years. In 1982 she brought her four- year-old son Rashan to this same hospital. The boy was listless, losing weight; he had white spots on his lips and tongue. The boy's father, a drug addict, had recently come out of prison and was not at all well himself.
For the next few years,...
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