Passing on the Gift of Healing

I knew who he was the moment I noticed him at the bookstore checkout. He was the spitting image of his father, a doctor who had cared for my three-year-old sister in the 1960’s. Rachael was hanging on by a thread, the result of pneumonia. She had hardly eaten anything for days, and was so weak, she couldn’t even lift her head.

“Are you Dr. Winfield John?” I asked.

The man smiled warmly. “One of them. My father before me had the same name.”

“Well, your dad saved my little sister’s life back in the day. Made a home visit and gave her a shot of penicillin right there in that bed set up in our dining room. It was like a miracle. She went from barely responding to asking for vanilla wafers.”

“Penicillin used to be like that,” the doctor answered. “Back before all these superbugs.”

But there was something else I needed to tell him: “Your father’s incredible caring made me want to be a healer, too, when I grew up.” As I had stood at my sister’s bedside, rejoicing with my family that Rachael was going to make it, I looked ahead in time. I saw myself in a pristine white uniform and starched white cap, and knew that somehow, someway, I would be a nurse.