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.

She wasn’t crying. She was too far past that. Her gaze jittered around the room like it was trying to find someplace familiar and finding nothing.

Her parents were gone before the ambulance even reached us.

I wasn’t supposed to be the one who stayed with her. I had charts, labs, other patients. But when the nurses tried to move her, she grabbed my arm with both hands and clung like I was the last solid thing in the universe.

“I’m Avery. I’m scared. Please don’t leave me and go. Please…” she whispered, over and over, as if repeating it might stop the entire world from disappearing.

I should have stepped away. Instead, I sat down.