The funny thing is that you wanted this for as long as you can remember,
more than you can express. Years spent outside looking
in like a starving kid outside a bakery, whiffs of heaven dancing in
his nose just out of reach and looking up like a mountain climber
who just wants to be allowed on the mountain. Then one day the
door opened and you were invited in and they handed you the white
coat and the heavy books and the heavier responsibility of knowing
that lives would be placed in your hands and it all felt like a revelation
and you knew this is what your whole life had been leading up
to. And you no longer have to imagine it because you’re touching
another human so hesitantly and apologizing that your hands are
so cold but can they please take a deep breath and then you almost
convince yourself that you can hear crackles but silently wonder if
you would even know what crackles sounded like if they came up
and trumpeted their arrival in your face. And you look at hands that
someday won’t be yours and you realize they will be the hands that
will one day deliver a baby or stitch a wound or hold a grieving widow,
and that thought is so big and holy it makes your knees shake
and you wonder how you’ll ever get there when it sometimes feels
like the very marrow of your bones has been replaced with lead.
And yet you go back. Back to the hundreds of pages of notes and
flashcards, diagrams and drawings. And though your eyes are blurry
and you’ve been staring at the same flashcard for thirteen and a
half minutes without reading it, it feels like a miracle, doesn’t it? That
you get to spend your days discovering the very mysteries of what it
means to be human, because you are listening to the raspy voice of
your 83-year-old patient guide you through the convolution of what
they were diagnosed with and when, and what was the name of that
medication again, and somehow they trust you, then later you peel
back the layers of skin and fat and muscle of a donor and realize
that this was a person who loved someone, who maybe liked jazz
or hated olives, and now they’re teaching you how to save the next
person and they believed in your future enough to let you in and you
don’t know if it’s the formaldehyde or what but your eyes begin to
burn and the whole world feels caught in your throat and you wonder
if you’ll ever know enough to repay them or everyone else who
helped you get there but you’re sure going to try because it might
be the difference between life and death. And so you take the next
step.