Twenty tiny gray houses cluster on opposite sides of Hickory Street, a mile and a half north of the sprawling Hendrick Medical Center in Abilene, Texas. Each bright red or shiny white door opens to a story — hundreds of stories, really — of a temporary guest with a loved one in intensive care or new parents with a tiny newborn in the NICU. Other residents are patients who must stay near the hospital for dialysis treatments or while they wait to be placed on an organ transplant list.
