He was my first solo case — a five-year-old boy clinging to life on the operating table. Two decades later, he found me in a hospital parking lot and accused me of ruining everything.Back when this all began, I was 33 and freshly minted as an attending in cardiothoracic surgery. I never thought the same boy I helped would reappear in my life most crazily.
The kind of work I did was not general surgery — this was the terrifying world of hearts, lungs, and great vessels — life or death.I still remember how it felt walking through the hospital halls late at night with my white coat over scrubs, pretending not to feel like an imposter.
