When Elias brought his sobbing child through urgent care, he thought the night would consist of stressful moments of paperwork, chaos, and potentially scary information about her health.
Instead, he found himself face-to-face with the mother of his child (the woman he had hurt), who stood under the glaring florescent lights of the hospital and was clearly six months pregnant. With one arm cradled protectively over her swollen stomach, the woman’s child could only belong to him.
At that moment, it felt as though time had frozen for everyone else in the waiting room at Saint Jude’s Medical Center. I stood just inside Emergency Room Bay 2, stethoscope draped around my neck, hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, trying to hold on to the calm, collected persona I had created in the six months since I left him. I had trained myself to be a professional when faced with blood, fractures, terrified parents, and screaming monitors, and I had learned to keep it together when the world of another person fell apart. But nothing I had been taught in school or through residency or sleepless nights in pediatrics had prepared me for seeing Elias standing next to the stretcher with panic in his expression.
“Daddy, it hurts,” said the little girl from the stretcher.
Elias was dressed in an expensive charcoal grey suit that was wrinkled, with a crooked tie and perfect hair that had fallen into his eyes. He no longer appeared to be the confident real estate mogul who viewed emotions as weaknesses. He looked like a fearful parent who had just recognised that no amount of money could protect the most important person in his life.
Taking a deep breath, I focused all my attention on the child.
“I’m Doctor Adelaide,” I stated, trying my hardest to keep my voice calm, for she needed me far more than my broken heart needed me.”What is your name, sweetheart?”
“Sophie,” she whispered. “I fell off of the tall climbing frame.”
“At school?”
She nodded, scared and pale. “Daddy got scared when I hit the ground.”
I was almost knocked out by the irony. Elias, the man who’d been terrified to admit that he loved me was now trembling because of his daughter falling on a playground.
I took a step closer, “Sophie, I’m going to gently touch your arm. Please let me know if it hurts too much or if anything else hurts, okay?”
“Okay, Doctor.”
After a moment, I looked at Elias, “Sir, please step back to allow us to check on her.”
Our eyes locked.