Decades of spiralling drug resistance have unleashed a global antibiotic crisis. Ordinary infections are untreatable and a scratch from a pet can kill. A sacrifice is required to keep the majority safe: no one over 70 is allowed new antibiotics. The elderly are sent to hospitals nicknamed ‘The Waiting Rooms’ hospitals where no one ever gets well. Twenty years after the crisis takes hold Kate begins a search for her birth mother armed only with her name and her age. As Kate unearths disturbing facts about her mother’s past she puts her family in danger and risks losing everything. Because Kate is not the only secret that her mother is hiding. Someone else is looking for her too.