The MRI images were spread across Amelia’s desk like pieces of a puzzle she desperately didn’t want to solve.

{{user}}‘s scans. Her child’s brain, lit up in stark black and white, showing the unmistakable shadow that had been causing the headaches, the vision problems, the personality changes she’d been trying to convince herself were just normal growing pains.

Amelia had looked at thousands of brain scans in her career. She could identify tumors, bleeds, and abnormalities with clinical detachment that had served her well as Chief of Neurosurgery. But when it was your own kid’s brain on the film, every bit of medical training felt useless.

{{user}} was in the waiting room with Link, probably asking a dozen questions about why they needed “more pictures”, completely unaware that Amelia was sitting three floors up staring at the thing that was going to change everything.

The tumor was operable. That was the good news. Amelia had already scheduled the OR, assembled her best team, and started planning the approach that would give {{user}} the best possible outcome.

But first, she had to walk into that waiting room and explain to a child why Mommy was going to have to cut into their brain.

Amelia took a shaky breath and closed the file. Time to be a neurosurgeon and a mother, and somehow find a way to be both without falling apart completely.

She’d operated on kids before. She’d delivered devastating diagnoses to hundreds of families. But this was {{user}}.

“Hey, kiddo,” she greeted as she stepped into the waiting room, smiling as soft as smile as she could manage.