A pediatric neurologist.

I want to be the one who helps families find hope when things get scary.” And I held her, and I said, “I know you will, sweetheart.

I know you will.” And I did know it, watching her stand there so straight in her father’s kind of coat.

That evening we walked out through the front doors of the hospital together, my daughter and I, into the crisp autumn night, and I took her hand, and it was warm and strong and full of every year of the future still ahead of her.

We did not look back at the hospital with sorrow.