The Engineers' Daughter

James and Lindsay Sulzer have spent their careers developing technologies to help people recover from disease or injury. A freak accident changed their work—and lives—forever.

- By Daniel Engber

The last words that Liviana Sulzer spoke, 18 months ago, were very much in character: “Now it’s time for a song.” This was often how she felt, living as she did inside a toddler movie-musical, where even just a spilled cup of milk could get her up onto a chair, twirling with her arms out wide and singing as loud as she could manage: We just spilled our milk … It was messy on the table, and then we cleaned it up … And noooow it’s aaaaall cleeeaaaned up! When the song was over, she’d bend toward her brothers, ages 6 and 1, in a deep and gracious bow.

It was May 2020—a week before Livie’s fourth birthday— and the kids were playing in the yard. Throughout the Sulzers’ quiet neighborhood in Austin, Texas, the Persian silk trees had begun to bloom in pink-tipped puffs. There were flowers in their backyard, too. Livie had a favorite one, purple and about as tall as she was. She called it Dr. Iris and, trapped at home by the COVID-19 shutdown, she’d made a game of scooting over to it in her push-car and spilling all her problems. (She often couldn’t think of any when she got there.)