“Dex, calm down.” She placed her hand on my forearm and leaned against the corner of my desk. “I know…I know.” Her smooth fingertips moved up and down my arm, following the cords underneath my skin, tracing them from the top of my hand to my elbow. “All that matters is she’s going to see you, and you’re going to make her better.”
I shook my head. “It’s more complicated than that. This hole is pretty fucking big, and it’s gonna be tricky. When it comes to pediatric cases, I can’t completely know exactly what’s going on until I actually open them up. I open them up and have to figure out what to do in the moment, on the spot. I know she has a hole in her heart and I know what to do, but there could be other issues that I won’t realize until I’m in there. This would have been much easier if we did this when she was a baby, and the hole may have caused other issues in her heart that wouldn’t be there if she’d done this sooner. That’s why it’s so important to get help immediately. Don’t wait six months, don’t wait a year…don’t wait a minute.”
She continued to rub my arm. “You’ve got this, Dex. You will heal her.”
I leaned my head back against the chair. “This poor kid, man. And she’s scared on top of it because she’s old enough to understand what’s happening…”
She watched me with a look of concern, like she could somehow feel exactly what I felt, feel the burden, feel the stress. “We’ll figure it out, Dex. We’ll figure it out.”
Andrea brought Mr. and Mrs. Tompkins in, along with Ginny, who was the cutest five-year-old ever.
Well, except my nephews when they eventually turned five.
She was shy, hiding behind her mom, eyes down.
We made our introductions, and they sat on the couch across from me, Mom and Dad on either side, with Ginny in the middle. She had dirty-blond hair in a high ponytail, and she wore pink leggings with a pink sweater on top. She had blue eyes like my sister. Anxious, she kicked her feet as they dangled over the edge.
Sicily was in the corner, ready to type notes.
I hated kids. Not as people, but as patients because it was a million times more stressful. Not just the surgery itself, but my investment in their well-being. It was far more heartbreaking to lose a kid on the table than an old man who had lived life to the fullest. I’d never lost a kid before, and that was a record I refused to break.
I stared at her for a while and waited for her to look at me. I didn’t get down to business with the parents because I knew she was scared, so scared she thought she was going to the dentist. “Hey, Ginny. I’m Dex.” I placed my hand over my chest, giving her a warm smile so she wouldn’t be so shy. “Is pink your favorite color?”
She looked up at the mention of pink. Then she nodded.
“My favorite color is blue. But pink is nice.”
“Pink is also my favorite color,” Sicily said, giving the girl a smile.
“Yeah?” Ginny whispered.
Sicily nodded. “It looks good on everybody and everything.”
Ginny turned back to me.
“So, how old are you, Ginny?” I thought it was best to talk for a while, to get her to feel comfortable with me before I started to get into the reason why she was there. “Thirty…five?”
She released a giggle. “No!”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “Forty-five, then.”
She laughed harder. “I’m five.”
“Oh, my mistake,” I said. “I had no idea. So, you guys are from California, huh? You got a lot of friends?”
We talked back and forth for a while, and it wasn’t until she changed her body position and talked to me like a friend that I finally inched toward the reason for the visit. I only had half an hour before I needed to move on to my next patient, and I’d already spent ten minutes talking to her, but it was necessary. “So, I know your parents told you that you’re here for a dentist appointment, but I’m actually a doctor. And I’m a really good doctor.”
She stopped kicking her legs once she realized what was happening. “Because of my heart?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
She dropped her gaze again, her fingers coming together to fidget in her lap. Her breathing was always quick and short because her lungs simply couldn’t expand enough for one single, full breath. But now it got worse.
“Sweetheart, I know you’re scared. It’s okay to be scared. We all get scared.”
“Even you?” she whispered.
I nodded. “Even me.” I was so scared that I’d stopped living my life for an entire year. This little girl was far braver than I was. “But I want you to know that everything will be alright, that I’m going to take really good care of you.”