Page 76 of One Last Rodeo

Exhaustion and hope are woven into every line of their bodies. I shake their hands.? They look like they could be my age, if not a little older. I can't imagine going through pregnancy and birth, watching their baby grow, and then watching them struggle with an unexpected health complication. It's a heart break that most people can never relate to.

I look back at Olivia and that pang returns to my chest. The hazel in her eyes... it's so much like Jensen's. I wonder what Jensen's children will look like when he inevitably has them someday. I hope they have his eyes, but more importantly, I hope they havehis heart. The one I fixed, yes, but the kindness and softness it naturally has.

Don't think about that.

“We’re going to take good care of her,” I say. “I’m just going to listen to her heart, review the scans, and then we’ll talk about what comes next.”

“Do you think you can help her?” her mother asks quietly from behind Davis. Her voice cracks on the word help.

We both know that I can’t promise anything. This is always the hardest part of my job—the place where the certainty that we all crave meets the reality that medicine, for all its miracles, can never promise tomorrow or a perfectly desired outcome. Even when I’ve fixed this defect before in patients. Even when I know I can do this. The confidence is there, but the unpredictability of about a thousand different factors we always work hard to mitigate, still looms like a shadow.

“I never take a case that I’m not confident I can fix.”

It’s my line. My shield. My steady hand when families tremble.

They exhale shakily, and I move to Olivia’s bedside for her examination.

“Hey, sweetheart. Sit really still for me, okay? I’m just going to listen to your heart and lungs for a bit.”

She nods with all the seriousness of a seven-year-old trying to be brave. I press the stethoscope to her chest, listening to lungs, heart sounds, the telltale swish of turbulent blood. I recognize it instantly. A defect. Manageable, normally. But hers is trickier, made more complicated by the orthopedic issue Davis is addressing and her age. Her care needs to be timed perfectly.

Davis distracts her with the stuffed puppy while I finish my assessment, and even though everything between us burnedto the ground, inside a hospital we’ve always worked like a matched set. Med school, residency… we’d been a team helping each other.

Maybe that’s why I stayed with him far longer than I should have—because with him, things functionedwell. For a while. We were like a good surgical machine.

In medical school, we’d spend our evenings together quizzing each other on infectious diseases. We made sure we passed our courses and exams. We supported each other with referrals and kind words in public, even if I was more generous with mine.

And once, a long time ago, he did see me. My potential. My hunger to be more. Maybe that's why he chose me. Maybe that’s why I stayed too long. Because a part of me felt like I was being appreciated. Until eventually, my potential became real results and real became too much for him when I surpassed him in accolades and surgeries.

“Thank you, Olivia. Hang tight for me,” I say once I’m done with my examination.

I tuck my tools away and gesture for her parents to follow me to the door. Jordan is waiting there, watching me with her eyebrows practically disappearing into her hairline as she takes physical and mental notes. I know exactly what she's doing—cataloging every move I make, and every look Davis sneaks my way when I'm not paying attention, all so she can dissect it later.

“From what I’ve seen so far,” I say to her parents, my voice slipping right back into its clinical, detached tone, “it’s important we address this quickly.”

Her mother presses a hand over her mouth. “How soon?”

“This week. In two days, preferably. While I’m still in town.”

She nods, then stifles a sob with her hand. “We should’ve come sooner. I told you, we should have come sooner.”

She turns to her husband with a panicked look on her face. Her husband doesn't push her away or berate her for expressing normal, worried human emotions that might seem accusatory. Instead, he pulls her into his arms and just holds her. He doesn't deflect or pass the blame back to her. He supports her. He knows this is just her worst fears manifesting themselves and not a direct attack on him.

Before I can stop myself, I reach out and touch her arm. Gently. Reassuringly. Something Inever, everdo. I’ve always kept that distance—kept patients as bodies, cases, puzzles of muscle and valves and bone. It’s how I’ve survived ten years of slicing into beating hearts.

Yes, I know I said that I see each case as simply a body to cut into and fix. But I’ve always cared about the outcome, and not just because it would hurt my success streak. I care about people. I've justnevercaredquite like this.

My fingers curl softly around her elbow, and it hits me: JensenFreakingGrant has rewired something inside me. Knocked a crack straight through the armor that I normally wear. Made the patients human in a different kind of way. He's shown me what empathy feels like. What warmth feels like. He's shown me that there are people living inside these bodies that I help heal, moving about the world for years later, with love and families who adore them. He's explained to me without words that I'm not all cold corners and sharp tongues like most people think. That I can be warm too.

Maybe I just needed to know one person I’d fixed intimately to look at things this way. And now that I do, I don’t know if I can ever go back to seeing them neutrally again. I don't know if I'llever be able to perform surgery the same way again. And that's what terrifies me.

“My surgical tech, Jordan, will help get you set up with scheduling,” I say as I gently release her arm. “We’re going to get through this. We’ve got a plan, now we just need to execute it.”

She nods, eyes shining with tears. Jordan steps forward—still processing this new version of me, I can tell. She smiles at the couple warmly. She was always better at this part.

“Let’s go to the room next door. I’ll grab us a scheduler and we'll talk pre-op paperwork and prep. The nurse can stay here with Olivia in the meantime.”

They exit the room but before they make it out completely, her father leans back to say to me softly, “Thank you for everything, Doctor Alba. We heard you’re only part-time at the hospital right now. You’ll be the one performing the surgery, correct?”