He showed them the areas of the surgical floor they were allowed to see and explained several different jobs to Dylan. Dylan feigned interest but his body language communicated that he cared about as much as he would about the hospital’s bylaws. Conversely, Leah—always hungry for deeper understanding of a topic—soaked in every word.

When Sebastian finished, Dylan responded with the sparkling verbal parry of “Huh.”

They visited the room where the doctors met each morning to view X-rays before rounds. Then they moved on to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.

“Do Dylan and I need a pass in order to enter?” she asked.

“Not if you’re with me. I gave one of the administrators a heads-up that you were coming.”

The PICU felt like a high-tech spaceship on red alert. A central desk served as the command center.

Again, Sebastian paused and talked through the many roles the PICU employees filled. “Do any of these jobs sound like something you’d want to do?” he asked Dylan.

“I mean . . . maybe.”

“Really?” Sebastian asked skeptically.

“No, to be honest. No offense. I mean, it seems like you’re doing okay, but . . .”

Leah’s mouth formed a horizontal line.

“But I’m not into this. At all.” Dylan yawned gloomily.

“Well,” Sebastian said to Leah, “I guess we can cross health professions off Dylan’s list.”

“I guess so. Narrowing things down is helpful.”

Dylan wandered toward the nearest bathroom.

“Would it be possible to look in on a few of your patients?” Leah asked Sebastian.

“If you’d like to, yes.”

“I’d like to.”

She followed him into a room filled with machines and monitors. On the miniature bed lay a dark-skinned, black-haired infant.

“This is Levi. He’s beating the odds. Right after his birth he survived an emergency procedure with a mortality rate of ninety-five percent.”

“What was his diagnosis?”

“Hypoplastic left heart syndrome, but without an atrial septal defect. Usually, we close up holes in hearts. But in his case, his lack of a hole was causing blood to back up into his lungs. So my colleague ran a catheter to his heart and punched a hole in exactly the right spot.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Have you operated on him since?”

“Yes. The Norwood procedure, six days ago.”

“You had to build a new aorta.”

“You’re right. I also had to make his right ventricle pump blood to the body through the aorta and to the lungs through a new path to the pulmonary artery.”

“What are his prospects?”

“Good.”

It was one thing to read about congenital heart defects and the surgeries employed to repair them, quite another to observe one of the children who’d been impacted.

Levi seemed impossibly small and frail. And, of course, all kids radiated sweetness when they were sleeping. She knew this to be true because she’d been peeking in on Dylan while he was sleeping since he’d been this size.