The happiest day that my daughter and I planned together took a turn I never saw coming. One anonymous package filled my heart with questions I wasn’t prepared to ask.
Fifteen years ago, on a rainy Tuesday night in October, a pediatric trauma case rolled through the emergency room (ER) doors that would rewrite the rest of my life. I was 30, single, and married to my pager.
My apartment was a place I went to shower and sleep between shifts, nothing more.
The girl, Lily, was three, and her life was hanging by a thread.
Her parents died at the scene of the terrible car accident.
I went to shower and sleep between shifts.
I was the trauma surgeon and stayed in that operating room for 12 hours, doing everything I could to give her even the slightest chance of surviving.
When I finally stepped out, my scrubs were stiff, and my hands were shaking, but I managed to save her.