But I've never been on the receiving end of his full attention before, and it hits differently than I expected.
Quieter. Heavier.
"I know she is," he says. Certain. Like he's already made an assessment and filed it away in whatever mental catalog he keeps, and I passed without even knowing I was being tested.
It lasts two seconds. Maybe three.
Then he turns back to Wrenleigh and the moment is over, and I tell myself the warmth climbing up my throat is just the heat of the trauma bay and the twelve-hour shift and the quesoburrito I never finished.
I get Wrenleigh prepped and into imaging.
I'm efficient because I'm always efficient, and I'm thorough because Morgantown doesn't need another story of something falling through the cracks.
She talks the whole time—about the four-wheeler, about how her friend dared her to take the hill, about how she's going to be stuck in a cast for homecoming and about how it's "literally the worst thing that's ever happened to me, and yes, I know that's dramatic, but I'm sixteen, so I'm allowed."
I laugh. A real one, not the tired half-smile I give most patients.
And I catch her father watching me from the hallway through the window, his arms crossed, his shoulder against the wall.
Still in that cut. Still solid and compact and still as a held breath.
The surgery takes two hours.
I check on them between other patients—an elderly man with chest pain, a toddler with croup, the steady churn of a Tuesday night ER that doesn't know it was supposed to be uneventful.
Every time I pass the surgical waiting area, I see him.
Same chair. Same stillness.
Sadie Jo has fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder, and he hasn't moved a muscle because moving would wake her.
He sits there for two hours without shifting.
Two hours with a sleeping child on his shoulder and fear in his eyes, and he doesn't move because his daughter's comfort matters more than his own.
I've been doing this job for six years.
I've seen a lot of fathers in this hospital.
Some of them pace. Some of them rage. Some of them cry. Some of them disappear to the parking lot and don't come back until the hard part is over.
This one sits still and holds his daughter and waits.
The surgery goes well.
Clean pin through the tibia, proper alignment, no nerve damage.
Wrenleigh is groggy and pissed off when she comes out of anesthesia, which means she's exactly fine.
She tells the orthopedic surgeon his hands are cold, and he laughs so hard he has to leave the room.
I'm finishing her discharge paperwork when her father appears at the nurses' station.
He's got dark circles under his eyes that tell me he didn't sleep well before tonight either.
There's grease under his fingernails—from working at the clubhouse, probably, or someone who works with his hands.
His knuckles are scarred. Not from tonight. From years and years of holding things together by force.
