You could tell he had dealt with hardship and mastered it. Sun-browned and windblown, he probably earned his living outside. His knuckles bore scars faded by time and freshly pinked. His clothes still carried the evidence of work around machinery and paint—a worn T-shirt once white now tending toward gray, heavy khaki pants to protect against tools, steel-toed boots. Beneath the shirt rippled obvious muscles covered by no fat and prominent veins like vines. The picture of strength.
As I entered the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit to my daughter’s room, he crossed my path exiting another room. He didn’t really see me, defocused, looking at the floor in front of his feet as he walked.
He was crying. Not sobbing, but tears running down his cheeks and breathing through his mouth in an attempt to control.
A woman followed him three steps behind, arms crossed, also looking down, stone-faced. They left the unit together.
I don’t know what they had just heard in that room. I know a quick glance showed two nurses, a doctor, and a respiratory therapist. I looked away, respecting the privacy of the tiny figure over which they hovered.
I don’t know. But I am certain stories play out here every day, stories that break your heart if you know them, stories these doctors and nurses, respiratory therapists, chaplains, social workers, wound care specialists, surgeons, X-ray technicians, and dozens of other professionals carry home with them every day. Every. Day.
You might not know it if you see these folks, the parents and the professionals, in the cafeteria or the gift shop. By then, they’ve put their social masks back on. But make no mistake. Everybody you pass has a story, is a story. In fact, as you read this, you may remember your own story, a time when everything that mattered to you seemed lost.
It is through these stories we relate to each other, even if we don’t tell them out loud. We probably don’t tell them because we think no one else would care or understand. When you pass someone with that look, remember your own story, remember your shared humanity, and maybe share a kind thought, even if it’s a silent one.
I’m sitting with my daughter now, facing her own battle. But I have the spare capacity to share a prayer for that family whose name and circumstances I’ll never know, and a prayer of thanks for the doctors and nurses and others who, day after day, play a part in those stories.
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Kindness, prayer, empathy, and compassion cost nothing. I appreciate you sharing a glimpse of what you witnessed. Whilst in the trenches of your own story and family illness, you do not let that stop you from experiencing empathy for another family and offering up prayers. Beautiful.