Thirteen years ago, I became a father to a little girl who lost everything in one terrible night. I built my life around her and loved her like my own blood. Then my girlfriend showed me something that shook me, and I had to choose between the woman I planned to marry and the daughter I’d raised.
The night Avery came into my life, I was 26 and working the graveyard shift in the ER. I’d graduated from medical school six months earlier, still learning how to keep my composure when chaos erupted around me.
I built my life around her and loved her like my own blood.
Two stretchers. White sheets already pulled over faces. And then a gurney carrying a three-year-old girl with wide, terrified eyes that scanned the room like she was searching for something familiar in a world that had just shattered.
Her parents were dead before the ambulance even reached us.
I wasn’t supposed to stay with her. But when the nurses tried to take her to a quieter room, she locked onto my arm with both hands and wouldn’t let go. Her grip was so tight I could feel her pulse racing through her tiny fingers.
I wasn’t supposed to stay with her.
“I’m Avery. I’m scared. Please don’t leave me and go. Please…” she whispered, over and over. Like she was afraid that if she stopped saying it, she’d disappear too.
I sat with her. Brought her apple juice in a sippy cup we found in pediatrics. Read her a book about a bear who lost his way home, and she made me read it three more times because the ending was happy, and maybe she needed to hear that happy endings were still possible.
When she touched my hospital badge and said, “You’re the good one here,” I had to excuse myself to the supply closet just to breathe.
Please don’t leave me and go.
Please…”
Social services arrived the next morning. A caseworker asked Avery if she knew any family members… grandparents, aunts, uncles, anyone.
Avery shook her head. She didn’t know phone numbers or addresses. She knew her stuffed rabbit was named Mr. Hopps and that her bedroom curtains were pink with butterflies.
She also knew she wanted me to stay.
She didn’t know phone numbers or addresses.
Every time I tried to leave, panic would flash across her face. Like her brain had learned in one horrible moment that people leave, and sometimes they never come back.
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