Tears dried and the tension resolved, Abed relaxes and enjoys the day with his son.

They've been through a lot -- and a lot more lies ahead.

Devastating news

For a boy who spent three months in a hospital, Okkhoy is surprisingly at ease at the Children's Center.

He is struck by the contrast. It is clean, colorful, quiet -- the opposite of the grime and the stench of the medical facility he has been to.

"My heart is fluttering like a butterfly," he says.

For his father, the surroundings mean little if the surgery isn't successful. And he has a clear-cut measure for success: Will my son be able to bear children?

During the pre-surgery consultations, he poses the same question over and over to each doctor.

And each query is met with the same guarded response: That's the great unknown.

"We've seen young men coming back from Iraq who've been injured with rocket-propelled grenades and other things more severe than this," Gearhart says. "But just as far as an injury committed by one person against another, to a child, this is the most severe genital injury that I've ever seen in 23 years of doing this."

He admits the surgery won't be easy.

"This is an operation that is not in the book anywhere," he says. "We'll sort of develop this operation as we go along."

He's enlisted the help of two other doctors: Dr. Richard Redett, a pediatric plastic surgeon; and Dr. Dylan Stewart, a pediatric trauma surgeon.

The doctors plan to take tissue from Okkhoy's forearm -- between his elbow and wrist -- and reconstruct it into the shape of a penis. They will then transplant it down to the groin.

It'll look like a normal penis, Redett says -- but it won't be fully functional. The hospital MRIs have revealed the attack has left little penile tissue around the injury.

"The bad thing about the operation is he won't be able to get an erection without having something put in there when he is older," Redett explains.

The information is translated.

Shocked and in disbelief, Abed asks the doctor to repeat himself. He wants to make sure he understands exactly what the doctor said.

"When he's of age and he's ready to start a family, what did you say he will need?" he asks.

The boy will have to be flown back to the United States, Redett says, so that doctors can put in an implant that will allow him to have an erection.

And even after that, he adds, Okkhoy will need the help of a fertility doctor to successfully procreate.

The news devastates Abed.

He had hoped this trip to Johns Hopkins would make everything okay, because so much of Okkhoy's life isn't.

Abed, a rickshaw puller, sold his rickshaw and his home to pay for his son's medical treatment in Dhaka. His family is in hiding. He is in debt.

He knows there will be no return trip. Reality won't allow it.