I was a pediatric surgeon. I was scheduled to perform a risky heart surgery on little Owen, six years old.

I’ve spent my entire career repairing broken hearts, but nothing prepared me for the day I met Owen.I was a pediatric surgeon when a six-year-old boy with a failing heart was brought into my care. He was impossibly small in that oversized hospital bed, his eyes far too large for his pale face. His chart read like a death sentence: congenital heart defect. Critical. The kind of diagnosis that steals childhood and replaces it with fear.

His parents sat beside him, hollowed out, as if they’d been afraid for so long their bodies no longer remembered how to exist any other way. Owen kept trying to smile at the nurses. He apologized for needing things.

God—he was so achingly polite it made my chest hurt.

When I came in to explain the surgery, he interrupted me in a small voice.

“Can you tell me a story first? The machines are really loud, and stories help.”

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