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Their infant daughter couldn’t have weighed more than five pounds. The smallest hand that I had ever seen closed around my little finger as her squint opened to reveal brilliant blue eyes, eyes that seemed to focus on mine. With a sharp gasp her mouth opened, her chest rose, and I witnessed the miracle of the first breaths of life. The cold that had followed me for days melted away, and I was left with a sense of incredible awe and wonder. While only minutes into this life, those eyes seemed to speak of ageless wisdom. It was a contradiction that I did not understand at the time, but I had a long way yet to travel on my journey.
A decade would pass before I would see eyes like those again. The fire service had been just a stop on the path that I was to take, a path that would lead to medical school and an invitation into the lives of incredible people. Roger Harrold was one such person. I met him during my residency at the VA hospital. The VA was a great place to learn medicine. It was a world of fathers and grandfathers, of heart-touching stories and of lives in need. Inevitably, patients would become family. Such was the case with Roger.
Early one morning found me sitting on the side of Roger’s bed. I had been up all night and still had many tasks to complete before I could go home, but at that moment Roger’s bedside was the place where I most wanted to be. I had only known him for a month, but it was an intense month. Much of each day was spent with Roger. There had been physical exams to conduct, procedures to perform,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and medication to administer. But there had been much more. We shared our thoughts, our dreams, and life itself. By the time I knew that Roger was dying, we were already family.
Paramedic training hadn’t adequately prepared me for what I held in my hands. The frantic man tried to get his wife to the hospital, but the car was hopelessly stuck in the snow despite hours of desperate digging. The petite woman was frightened. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Her doctor had told her that she had another month. Instead of a warm hospital bed, their dining room floor had to make do. It was my first delivery.
The snow was still falling, but for the most part the storm was over. It would take many days, however, before life in our small community would return to normal. Blizzards weren’t something that happened in Ohio, but there it was, a thick blanket of snow that had been whipped into incredible roof-high drifts that blocked roads and curved around homes like sand dunes on a beach. It was in the earliest days of my career, and the fire academy hadn’t adequately prepared me for what I would encounter during those cold January days long ago. For three days I sat huddled with colleagues in the cold dampness of the firehouse, gasoline generators supplying electricity for only our most essential needs. Rescue runs once escorted by police cars were now led by snow plows. The brightness of the snow stood in stark contrast with the darkness of our mood.
Medical school, conferences, and journals all contributed to my knowledge of medicine, but they could not teach healing. An ancient Asian proverb tells us,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” My patients became my teachers, and those br
As I held Roger’s hand, thickened and weathered from age and hard work, I was struck by his piercing blue eyes. They were eyes of infinite youth, of peace, and of great wisdom. With the most gentle of smiles and a soft gasp I witnessed the last breaths of life. It, too, was a miracle. While I had seen death before, I had never participated so completely. I was often touched by the brevity and fragility of life―one moment you are alive,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and next moment you are not. But what came next? What would become of the experiences, memories, and knowledge that took a lifetime to collect? They were questions without answers, but in those eyes I had seen understanding of great depth. Indeed, there would be much more to come for Roger. His journey would not end that day.

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