Sebastian was not the architect of the heart. He was simply a very well-trained plumber. His goal today, and every day, was to restore defective hearts as close as possible to God’s blueprint. The more effectively he could do that, the better and faster his patient would recover.
The phone rang. Dave, the anesthesiologist, answered, then murmured to the caller.
Sebastian continued without pause, his attention fixed on closing the hole between the left and right ventricles. The heart-lung bypass machine hummed, doing the work of both the heart and the lungs during surgery by pumping the infant’s blood through his body. The less time Mateo was on bypass, the better, so Sebastian had to make the right decisions, and he had to make them fast.
He also had to think two, six, eight steps ahead. The best surgeons possessed more than knowledge and skillful hands. They possessed feel. In this line of work, disaster was usually the result of several minor mistakes instead of a major one. He was learning to recognize subtle patterns and anticipate every way in which things could go wrong.
“A baby with transposition of the great arteries has been delivered in Macon,” Dave said to him, holding the phone against his chest. “His name’s Josiah Douglas. Fourteen hours old, eight pounds. They’re transporting him here by ambulance.”
Sebastian paused his stitching and looked up over his surgeon’s loupes. “Have they started him on prostaglandins?”
“Yes.”
“When will he arrive?”
“About an hour.”
He bent his head back to his task. His current repair was progressing like poetry.
Josiah would need a septostomy procedure today. Then, after giving him a week or so to recover and grow, an arterial switch operation.
The Clinic for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Diseases here at Beckett Memorial was one of the most prestigious in the country, alongside Boston Children’s, the Cleveland Clinic, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and the University of California San Francisco.
The surgical team and the pediatric intensive care team here ran an extremely successful defense against death. They’d do whatever they could to ensure that they did not lose Mateo. Or Josiah.
Not today, God.
Not on my watch.
When Sebastian entered Josiah’s room that evening, a distinctive, now-familiar energy closed around him. None of the energy originated with the boy, who lay unconscious onhis warming bed. All of it came from the bright, hard-working machines sustaining his life.
Josiah’s light brown hair lay against his round head at strange angles. He had big cheeks and a small mouth.
As Sebastian stood at his bedside, feeling his tiredness, an image of Leah slipped into his mind. He saw again exactly how she’d looked at the farmers market, surrounded by flowers. He replayed the moment when her eyes met his—
Stop it.
Weeks had passed since that day, and he wanted her out of his head.
He was no longer a child who took toys from other people and felt nothing when they cried. But that didn’t mean that it was in his nature to sit on the sidelines while other people pursued the things he wanted.
It wasn’t.
It was in his nature to go after the things he wanted single-mindedly. Which is exactly what he would have done had the obstacle between himself and Leah been anything and anyone other than Ben. As it was, he could do nothing, which sent frustration scratching down his limbs.
She’s off limits, he kept telling himself.
She’s off limits.
Three days later, Ben stopped in the open doorway of Leah’s classroom. “Want anything from the break room?” he asked.
She paused the motion of the sponge she was using to clean her whiteboard. Ben’s easygoing, open personality never failed to brighten her day. “Watermelon-flavored sparkling water?”
“You bet.”
He vanished. The space he’d vacated framed a view of the hallway, lockers, and passing students.
Ben occupied the classroom across the hall and four doors downfrom hers. They shared a free period, so at the same time almost every day, he stopped by to ask if she wanted anything from the teacher break room.
