A major surgery… the confirmation of love. I walked slowly up the four flights of stairs, on my way to the pediatric critical care ward. Entering the shiny double doors, I paused to scrub up with disinfectant at the sink, and then made my way to the back corner room that had been Jessica’s home for the last 10 days. The curtain door was closed. There must be something going on I thought, as I quickened my pace. Quietly and slowly opening the door, I looked expectantly towards Jessica’s bed. Dr. Forester, stethoscope to her ears, looked up and smiled absentmindedly as she leaned over Jessica, carefully listening to her heart. Just a routine check-up I thought with relief, as the monitoring equipment attached to Jessica beeped rapidly in the background. I looked at Jessica lying there, with tubes and wires coming out all over her body, and a respirator covering her face and nose to help her breathe. Our eyes met. “Hi Jessica!” I said cheerfully. “How’s my girl?”  As I reached out, and took her small delicate fingers in my hand, a thought came rushing back from the past, “…look, she has the hands of a pianist. She’s going to grow up to be a great concert pianist!” “That’s remarkable… just remarkable!” Doctor Forester exclaimed, interrupting my thoughts, as the insistent beeping rapidly declined, followed by a plummeting of Jessica’s vital sign numbers. I looked up and watched them tracing themselves in green, on the monitor. “Jessica sure knows her daddy! That really is remarkable!” the doctor finished. Surprised at her comments, I looked at Dr. Forester. She was looking at me in amazement, a broad smile on her youthful face. Stalled in the Critical Infant Care Unit. (CICU) We had met Dr. Forester as a part of the brilliant surgical team, that had operated on Jessica. Her speciality is ‘Pediatric Cardiology.’ That’s a ‘heart doctor for little kids.’ We liked her almost immediately and the tender way that she interacted with Jessica. She was a young, but excellent doctor, now doing follow up in the hospital. Jessica was recovering from major surgery. One of the physical ailments that comes with the territory, when you have a developmentally delayed child, is something called ‘scoliosis’ of the spine. Read more…