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I was a pediatric surgeon. I was scheduled to perform a risky heart surgery on little Owen, six years old.
When I stepped into the hallway, a nurse was waiting with a manila folder and a look that told me everything.
Owen’s parents had signed every discharge form, taken every instruction sheet—and then walked out of the hospital and vanished. The phone number was disconnected. The address didn’t exist.
Maybe they were drowning in medical debt. Maybe they thought abandonment was mercy. Maybe they were simply broken people who made an unforgivable choice.
I stood at the nurses’ station, stunned, trying to understand how someone could kiss their child goodnight and decide never to come back.
That night I came home after midnight to find my wife, Nora, still awake on the couch, holding a book she wasn’t reading. She took one look at my face and set it aside.
“What happened?”
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