I Saved a 5-Year-Old Boy’s Life During My First Surgery – 20 Years Later, We Met Again in a Parking Lot and He Screamed That I’d Destroyed His Life
He was my first solo case — a five-year-old boy clinging to life on the operating table. Two decades later, he found me in a hospital parking lot, furious, and accused me of ruining everything. Back then, I was 33, fresh out of residency, and newly minted as an attending in cardiothoracic surgery. I never imagined that the tiny child I saved would reappear in my life in the most unbelievable way. Five years old.Car crash. The kind of work I did wasn’t general surgery — it was the terrifying