Carefully, she deleted her browser history in case Dylan attempted to snoop.
She and her brother were about to leave on their epic road trip. Her goal for their time away: to rest and to fill her days with new places and experiences. She refused to let this thing with her past distract her so much that she couldn’t enjoy the vacation she’d spent six months planning.
Fate, destiny, paternity were weighty issues. Twenty-eight years had gone by without her knowing anything about the Brooksides. It wouldn’t hurt to give herself time to strategize her next move.
One afternoon in mid-July, Sebastian assessed the couple who’d just taken the seats across from him in his office at Beckett Memorial.
Timothy and Megan Ackerman, both around his age, were sitting in the two chairs no parent wanted to sit in. All the parentswho sat in those chairs were forced to face one of the worst things that can happen to a person—the life-threatening sickness of their child.
A sonogram in the middle of Megan’s second trimester had shown that their daughter, Isabella, had a combination of heart problems, including a faulty ventricle. Less than a week ago, at thirty-six weeks of gestation, the doctors in their hometown recognized that Isabella’s heart was starting to fail, so they delivered her by emergency C-section. Once testing confirmed that her heart was dangerously malformed, Isabella had been transported here. For the past several days, the PICU staff had worked to stabilize her. She’d been on a ventilator, sedated, with tubes carrying medicine into her bloodstream. Tomorrow Sebastian and his team would operate.
“The environment in utero is very supportive of babies with congenital heart defects,” Sebastian said. This situation was so upsetting and foreign to parents that they didn’t always grasp the information they were receiving. Prior to surgery, he met with parents for as long as was needed to make sure he had their informed consent and that they understood the options and risks. “The environment outside the uterus is much less kind. We’ve been giving Isabella prostaglandins, which have helped us replicate the benefits she was receiving before birth. However, the benefits they provide won’t fix anything, and they only last so long. Which is why we’re moving forward with surgery.”
Megan’s skin was pale, her eyes grim.
“I wish that we could repair Isabella’s heart through surgery, but we can’t,” Sebastian continued. “The best we can do tomorrow is put temporary fixes in place that will hopefully keep her heart functioning until a donor heart can be found, and we can perform a heart transplant.”
“Okay,” Timothy said.
“I’ll seat a band around her pulmonary artery, ligate her duct, and install a pacemaker.” Sebastian slid a diagram from his desk drawer and explained the procedures.
They listened, their posture tight with desperation. Sebastianknew that whatever part of their focus was here with him, the larger part was with their baby in the PICU.
Timothy looked like he could’ve played on the defensive line of his high school football team. He had a sandy brown beard and kind eyes.
Megan wore a maternity shirt that reminded Sebastian that she’d given birth just a few days before. As terrible as she must be feeling emotionally, she couldn’t be feeling great physically, either. Her blond hair was short in back, but her bangs were long and swept to the side around an earnest face.
Markie had already informed him that Timothy and Megan had been waiting and praying through infertility for four years. They’d gone through two in vitro fertilization treatments and been ecstatic when they’d conceived Isabella, their first baby.
The baby they’d waited and prayed for would soon be wheeled into the operating room to have her chest opened.
“If you were us, would you opt for your child to have this surgery?” Megan asked. She searched his face for guarantees.
Sometimes, this question wasn’t easy to answer. Sometimes parents faced two choices with evenly matched advantages and disadvantages. This was not one of those times. This surgery was Isabella’s only hope. “Absolutely.”
“Do you think she’ll make it through?” Megan asked.
“I think she will make it through, yes.”
“We’re Christians,” she said. “And we believe that God is still in the business of doing miracles.”
Sebastian nodded.
“He did a miracle for you once,” she said. “Right?”
“Right.” Clearly, they’d researched him and learned about the earthquake.
“Are you a believer?”
“Yes.” Sebastian didn’t elaborate, though he wanted to remind them that God didn’t often provide miracles on cue. In fact, only occasionally did He answer prayers for critically ill humans by healing them here on earth.
“It’s clear to us that God chose you to be Isabella’s doctor.” Megan glanced at Timothy, then back at Sebastian.
“We’d like to move forward with the surgery,” Timothy said.
“The two of us, our family, and our church will all be praying for Isabella and for you, Dr. Grant. We’re trusting the Lord to bring her through the surgery and, eventually, to give her a whole new heart.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
