The Voice Before the Desert

In 2014, a twenty-six-year-old physician named Elena Garza finished her residency at Johns Hopkins and volunteered with Doctors Without Borders. Her attending physician, a woman who had mentored her for three years, pulled her aside at the farewell gathering and said simply, "You are exactly the doctor I hoped you would become." Two weeks later, Elena was in a makeshift clinic outside Juba, South Sudan, treating cholera patients with dwindling supplies, no running water, and temperatures that cracked 110 degrees.…