Yesterday

“A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.”  Eudora Welty the late Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer. 

Several of my medical school classmates were relaxing together in our off hours in the living quarters at a country medical clinic in central Florida. They took an analogue picture when I broke into song, guitar in hand. 

Though I cannot clearly remember the sequence of events after half a century, I think I was thrilled that day because I had had enough sense to send a very sick baby off to the hospital. I could tell how challenging his condition had become as his folks carried him into the clinic with labored breathing.  I heard the classic rales (a crackling sound) in his lungs with my stethoscope and ordered an x-ray that showed pneumonia.

Any of my classmates could have done likewise, but nevertheless, as a student, it was a tremendous thrill to truly help that little one. I think the joy in that old black and white says it all.