The doctor shut the door, and silence filled the examination room.

She put on her clothes and tried to put a clip in her hair.

“It’s not working,” she said, frustrated something else went wrong.

I can’t blame her for being angry. Life had just dealt my daughter another blow.

She endures daily the rigors of therapy and medication that help her young body function despite the cruel mechanics of cystic fibrosis.

Each morning before 6:30, barely awake, she walks softly into my room to tap me on the shoulder and rouse me from the bed.

We settle onto the couch, and I beat her like a drum to clear the mucus, thickened by a genetic mutation, that clogs her lungs.

The same mutation that fouls the excretions in her chest prevents her digestive system from correctly producing enzymes necessary to break down the nutrients her body needs to thrive.

She may be little because of it, but she fights like a bulldog. She’s muscle and meanness. Ask anyone who has seen her fury on the soccer field.

It was when she finally started growing a bit that doctors saw a slight curvature in her spine.

We saw a specialist Thursday before last.

“I don’t have scoliosis,” she said, battling the tide as usual.

We both knew the truth when the doctor clipped the life-sized X-rays onto the light box mounted on the wall in front of us. Her spine bent 22 degrees between her rib cage and hips.

My daughter did not cry until he explained she likely would have to wear a brace 23 hours a day.

Sitting on the examination table, her head buried between her knees, she hid the silent tears in the gowns a nurse had given her to wear.

Scoliosis is not the end of the world. But it is a big deal to a kid who turns 14 on Wednesday.

She doesn’t want to wear a brace; she just wants to be normal, as if normalcy is a shield that will protect her from her peers.

If you know her, don’t mention I wrote this.

I wrote it for me, anyway. It helps me sort through my emotions.

I know I am not alone. We all have problems, big and small. Nothing will change that.

Nothing will change my wish to wave my hands and make her problems go away.

But it is mostly on her. There is little a father can do.

At the doctor’s office, I remembered stepping lightly on the hair clip earlier when it fell from her coat pocket.

“I can fix it,” I said.

The aluminum catch was bent, but I was able to spread apart the tiny pieces with my thumbnails. I pushed down the arm, and it locked into place.

If only I could fix other things so easily.

She put it in her hair, and we walked from the doctor’s office with hardly another word.

Contact Bobby Burns at baburns@reflector.com or 252-329-9572.