Sometimes our photographers do more than take images—they also help.

In Afghanistan on a story about maternal mortality, Lynsey Addario came across these two women on the road. Photographing them against a stark background, Addario was struck that they were out alone.

It turns out one was in labor.

“We offered to take them to the hospital, but they said they needed the husband's permission," Addario told my colleague David Beard. Addario and her guide went, got the husband's permission, returned, then drove the woman to a hospital, where the baby was delivered.

It was a happy counterpoint to a grim assignment. “So many women,” Addario said, “die in Afghanistan because they have no access” to medical attention.

The image, from 2015, was