Worth A Thousand Words

I am in a bit of a rush when a patient’s mother stops me. She doesn’t speak English, but she says my name so warmly I forget I’m in a hurry. She says her daughter’s name and makes a camera with her hands. “You want me to take a picture?” I ask. She nods and smiles. We round the corner, and for a moment I cannot move. The two of us watch proudly as her daughter, my patient, inches down the hallway toward us, what little body weight she has left pressing against the strong metal legs of a walker. Days before she could barely open her eyes when I called her name. This time, she calls to me. I try to take the camera from mom, but she shakes her head. “No…you two.” It takes a second for me to understand that she wants me in the picture. “Oh, no, I’m a mess,” I tug at my scrubs and am suddenly very aware of the messy pile of hair I have resting on top of my head. She, my lovely little patient (who no longer has the luxury of worrying about messy hair, or hair at all) grins at me, grabs my hand, and strikes a supermodel pose. I try to smile as best I can, because fingers crossed, this girl’s going to have this picture for a long, long time.