You Can’t Go Home Again.

This was the title of Thomas Wolfe’s iconic 1940s novel. And that declaration is valid if you expect “home” to be unchanged by time and perspective. I learned this when I returned to my high school in Canada, and I marveled at how the halls seemed smaller in a place that was once my whole world.

Now, having lived three decades in the United States to my Canadian friends, I am an American, and if I call any place in the United States my home, it would be Brooklyn and Kings County Hospital (KCH).

I recall seeing it for the first time as a medical student when I came for my interview; it looked like something out of an old gothic movie. The buildings that opened in 1831 loomed above me and were filled with history. These halls still provide the atmospheric backdrop for the TV show “New Amsterdam.”

KCH also provided the backdrop for my evolution from surgical resident to attending. It was my personal “Grey’s Anatomy”. Here, friends were made, and love was lost and found. This is where I learned how to operate and how to fight for myself and my patients — and any success or failure was someone’s loved one — they were not their diagnoses but real people. You didn’t have to like them; they always deserved your respect.

Most notably, in the diverse community of Flatbush, I blended in; my immigrant status was betrayed only when I spoke, and even then, I was one of many diverse accents. One of my favorite recollections about my residency years, other than the late night sandwiches from the bodega on the corner near the hospital, was that I learned to curse in five languages (Creole, Russian, Hebrew, Mandarin, and Arabic).

I became a combat surgeon after 9/11, working around the clock in the hospital, wondering when is this going to end, and humbled when I comprehended what the end meant for so many New Yorkers who lost friends and families on that day. I mourned for the city and for lives lost, and the words of then-mayor Rudy Giuliani unified us. A man whose leadership I now find suspect and divisive. How many things and people have changed?

I am not immune to change, having been struck by a car crossing a Florida street during my research years. But it was the doctors from KCH who reached out to my Florida physicians to let them know that even in a coma, I was one of their own. No errors would be accepted.

The County and SUNY-Downstate gave me time to recover and reserved my categorical position to allow me to finish my general surgery residency when after two more surgeries and many hours of rehab, I could return to medicine. When I faced misogyny and racism during my pediatric surgery fellowship in Oregon, it was the County that said, “come home.” Reviving their fellowship accreditation to help me cross the finish line.

Leave no man behind was always the motto; we were family.

KCH’s role in pediatric surgery history, in addition to having one of the oldest fellowships in the country, is that it has also been instrumental in training three of the first ten women of color to become pediatric surgeons, of which I am one. This is no small accomplishment.

Like the college football star who wants to return home and take his team, I have always acknowledged my debt to KCH and wanted to return to pay it forward.

My roots in NY are deep, and I was saddened to learn that KCH was not what it was when I trained there; it no longer had a fellowship, it was no longer a pediatric trauma center, and it did not have regular pediatric surgery coverage.

So, when I was contacted two years ago about returning home to KCH, I was excited. I believed this was the window God had opened for me after I closed the door on the toxicity I found at Carle Foundation Hospital. The possibility of returning KCH to its former glory and providing care to an underserved population that looked like what I saw in the mirror felt like the reaffirmation of my purpose in medicine — a purpose that was almost lost in the wake of my time at Carle.

But I have not returned.

In the last few years, I have received at least ten calls from recruiters reporting that KCH is desperate for a pediatric surgeon.

That is not hard to believe, as pediatric surgeons are unicorns who are often hard to corral.

And I know what you are thinking: I asked for an outrageous salary or a pink call room with no green M&Ms. But the answer to why KCH remains desperate for a pediatric surgeon while I continue my job search is easy to explain.

KCH may be desperate, but the new chief of surgery is not — maybe because he is not one of our own. He is not family.

He is skin folk, but he is not kinfolk. Trained on the West Coast, he is not nostalgic for the days when KCH was a pediatric trauma powerhouse. When saying you trained at KCH, it meant that you could repair a GSW with chewing gum and duct tape.

So, as I complete my credentialing for Harlem Hospital, I am happy to be returning to a racially diverse population in NYC, but it is not home yet.

Most painfully, I must acknowledge that the KCH I remember no longer exists.

Thomas Wolfe is correct: “You can’t go home again” because my home is gone.

RIP.