This morning, I was standing right in the middle of a 14 story building, full of chaos, and couple of dozen people going in and out at a time. It was a dull and rainy day, the sky was all grey, and it felt as if, suddenly, nature had lost all of its liveliness.

I was standing in the department of Cardiothoracic Surgery of one of the most famous hospitals in my city. I saw a young man sitting on a chair besides me. There was no place for me to sit as the OPD was full of patients and their relatives. The morning hour is always rush hour in hospitals. Relatives are visiting their beloved ones who are admitted to the hospital, outpatients are crowding in the clinic to get their problems solved as soon as possible, the maintenance staff is busy cleaning, making sure the hospital stays hygienic and disinfected, doctors are on their way to grab a quick cup of coffee before seeing the patients, and people like me, the junior doctors, keep waiting for these senior doctors to finish their coffee, in the meanwhile watching other people.

Getting back to this young man sitting beside me, he looked sick, yet there was some charm in his eyes. Looking at his eyes, I could see him smiling at me from behind his mask. “Are you a doctor here?” he asked, his voice low and dull. “Yes” I said. He looked at me very proudly, as if I had done something very great and something that deserved appreciation. “I really have great respect for your profession” he continued “I am a banker, but as a kid, I always used to say to my mother that when I grow up, I want to be a surgeon, I want to heal people, and take away their sorrows. I want to gain respect from people by serving the community. But as time passed, I realized I wasn’t made for medicine. Being a doctor is really not that easy. I couldn’t make up my mind to give my entire youth and struggle so hard to become a great physician one day. How do you guys do that? How do you always put your patients and duty first, and rest all as your second priority? A few of my friends are doctors, I see them struggling every day, especially in this pandemic situation, at times, they are ill-treated by the patients or their relatives, but how do you always accept the fact that the patient is right? How do you not say something in return to someone’s hateful words towards you?” … he kept asking me all these questions, to which I had no answers.

Internally, I felt so happy to see that people do value our struggles but I actually started questioning myself then, how do we really do all this? Is it that easy? Or have we blended in so well that we don’t realize or consider it as something unusual and praise-worthy? How do we do so many sacrifices on a day to day basis, and not even expect anything in return only because we intend to bring happiness to someone else?
All the chaos around me suddenly went silent, and I was deeply lost in these thoughts!

About the Author

Sakshi Watarkar is a 5th year Medicine and Surgery student. She is originally from India, but she studies in Italy. She is an avid learner and a silent observer. She likes to connect with people on a global level and try to learn something new from them!