As a trauma surgeon, I’m used to saving lives – but mine was saved thirty years ago by a stranger I never thought I’d see again. That changed when I spotted a familiar anchor tattoo on a homeless man’s wrist in the subway.
“Michael?” I asked, my voice shaking. The man who’d pulled me from a blizzard when I was eight looked up, his weathered face breaking into a smile when I told him who I was. Over dinner, he shared how he’d lost everything after saving me – his apartment, his job, his hope.
I rented him a motel room, bought him warm clothes, and planned to take him to see the ocean – his dying wish. But an emergency surgery for a little girl kept me at the hospital. When I finally rushed back, I found Michael had passed quietly in his sleep.
At his beachside memorial, I scattered his ashes where the waves meet the shore – the ocean he never got to see with his own eyes. Now, every time I save a patient, I whisper a thank you to the man who first saved me.
