Chance was among the lucky ones: He was judged a good candidate for surgery.

But a few days after I first met him and his mother, I found them sitting huddled under a tree outside the King Faisal Hospital in Kigali. Chance was a portrait of misery; Alphonsine was holding back tears. Hospital officials had refused to admit Chance unless Alphonsine paid a fee — which she did not have. She had come so far and struggled so hard to save her son’s life, only to have the door slammed in her face.

Should a reporter try to help? Aren’t we supposed to be the fly on the wall, watching events unfold without influencing them? I pulled out my cellphone and called Team Heart. They sent a member to sort out Chance’s admission. Even though the group has been performing surgery at the hospital since 2008, billing issues erupt every year, spawned by hospital bureaucracy and the quirks of health insurance in Rwanda. Later that day, Chance got in.

Full disclosure: I had already spoken up for him once before, when the team evaluating surgical candidates seemed to have forgotten him. Did it make a difference? I have no idea. They might have gone over their notes and remembered him anyway. Or maybe not.

Like the families of many of the other heart surgery patients, Alphonsine lived too far from the hospital to go home, so she joined the group, mostly mothers, who basically camped out on the broad terraces that wrapped around the hospital and linked its two wings.

Her first night was daunting, she told me later. A young man who had been scheduled for surgery suddenly deteriorated, and it became clear that he would not live through the night. At the same time, a young woman, Elina, who had just been admitted — and who has a major part in the story I wrote — began to cough and struggle for breath. But the team was trying to care for the dying patient. A nurse appointed Alphonsine to watch Elina’s oxygen monitor and call for help if the reading fell below a certain level.