I will do everything humanly possible to make it back on time, because I love you.

Twenty-five minutes later I was scrubbing in while the surgical team prepped the patient.

Her name was Paisley.

She had fallen from a rusted climbing structure at a neighborhood playground and arrived pale, barely conscious, bleeding out inside her own abdomen.

Her father had run alongside the gurney with tears streaming down his face until a nurse gently held him back at the double doors.

And just before those doors swung shut, I saw him wrap his arms around his little girl and whisper something to her — I could not hear all of it, only the end. I will be right here waiting when you wake up, pumpkin. I did not know that man’s name yet.