Page 109 of Lily In The Valley
“You like unicorns?” I asked.
She nodded. “They’re magic.”
I leaned in. “You know what else is magic?”
“What?”
“How fast your body’s healing, growing strong, even with just one kidney.”
She grinned. “Dr. Kelly, you sound like my grandma.”
“She sounds like a smart woman.”
We fist-bumped. Her mom mouthedthank youbehind her.
Room 412:Noah, age 6, sickle cell anemia, admitted for pain crisis.
He was drawing on the whiteboard when I walked in, his tiny frame bundled in dinosaur pajamas. He offered me a green crayon and told me the T-Rex was him big and strong even when it hurts.
“How’s your pain today, buddy?” I asked, crouching to his level.
He shrugged. “My legs still feel like fire a little.”
I nodded gently. “Fire legs are tough, but you’re tougher.”
“The heating pad helped,” his dad added. “And the red popsicle.”
I grinned. “Medicine and popsicles. Best combo there is.”
His dad chuckled from the corner. “You’re the only one that can get him to say more than a few words.”
“It’s because I know the secret.”
“What secret?” Noah piped up.
“Dinosaurs don’t quit,” I whispered, tapping his nose. The boy squealed.
Dr. Sayegh caught up with me near the nurses’ station. “I’ve been watching you today,” she said, arms folded. “Taking notes on how you’re doing.”
“Better or worse?”
She gave me that soft, rare smile she saved for meaningful moments. “Centered.”
We made our way to the NICU. A quiet reverence always lingered there — low lights, soft beeping, the hush of hope and fear woven into every breath. We checked in on twins born at twenty-eight weeks. Their mother, no older than me, had tear tracks on her face but fire in her eyes.
“They’re fighters,” I said gently. “So are you.”
She didn’t say anything. Just nodded and kept her hand on the incubator window. Sometimes, that was enough.
While I missed my friends and family back home, it felt good to be getting back to what I loved most. Showing others healingdidn’t mean you had to have pain. I thought it’d take me a few weeks to get back into the groove of things, but being back in the halls, seeing the smiling faces of patients, the sage advice from nurses, it felt like a part of me that was hiding was coming to the forefront.
At lunch, I didn’t eat in the breakroom. I walked down to the courtyard instead, sitting beneath a cherry tree that hadn’t bloomed yet, journal in my lap.
I wrote:
I’m not the same woman who cracked.
I’m rebuilding without hiding the fracture lines.
