Thirteen years ago, I walked into my shift at the ER as a brand-new doctor. By the time the sun came up, I’d walked out as somebody’s father—and I didn’t even know it yet.
Back then, I was 26, six months out of med school, still convincing my hands not to shake when things got loud and bloody. We were just settling into the usual chaos of a graveyard shift when the paramedics burst through the doors with a wreck that looked like it had taken out someone’s entire world.
Two stretchers. White sheets already pulled over still faces.
And a third gurney carrying a three-year-old girl with big, wild eyes and a seatbelt bruise across her chest.