A Christmas Gift for the Doctor

 By John Collins Harvey

Saturday Evening Post 1958

It is in his first year of actually practicing medicine, that full realization dawns on the young doctor of the tremendous responsibility for human life placed in his hands. Believe me, this can be quite frightening. Grave doubts arise in the young intern’s mind about his knowledge, ability, and worthiness. Wise guidance from more experienced physicians, coupled with the appreciation and affection shown him by patients he has helped, builds self-confidence. But the process is a slow one.

 

My own doubts were so great in the fall of my internship year at Johns Hopkins Hospital that I had about decided to leave medicine for another field. But fate intervened.

 

One Saturday morning in September a thirty-nine-year-old woman, Irene by name, was brought to the hospital. She was a pitiful creature, emaciated, woebegone, looking twice her age. Her family, who had driven her to Baltimore from their small farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in their twenty-year-old truck, were obviously very poor.

 

Irene talked irrationally at times, fidgeting with the bedclothes, pulling at her hair. Her family reported that she had been getting "peculiar" for some time. She didn’t eat and had become so weak that she had taken to her bed and showed no interest in her surroundings. A doctor had told them she was mentally ill and should be committed to the state hospital, but they decided to bring her to Baltimore to see if she couldn’t be helped.

 

That afternoon the resident physician and I examined her. We found that she was suffering from a profound anemia, a heart condition, and severe overactivity of the thyroid gland. She was started on iodine drops for hyperthyroidism. Digitalis was given for her heart. An X-ray of her stomach, taken the next day, showed a large ulcer, and treatment was instituted. She was given blood transfusions and fed intravenously for a few days.

 

Gradually Irene became quiet. She began to eat. Her heart began to function more efficiently. Her anemia disappeared, and she became quite a different person.

 

I got to know her well during this time. She had little formal schooling and knew virtually nothing about the world beyond the Eastern Shore. But she was endowed with a great deal of common sense and was rich in her love for people. I spent many spare moments at her bedside, listening to her talk about life on the farm, crops, cooking, or her family. She loved flowers, but since the family had no land to spare for growing anything but food, she would pick wildflowers in the fields, and tree blossoms. One of her favorites was holly, which grew around her home.

 

Finally, the day came for Irene’s discharge. She shook hands with me and said simply, "Thank you, Doc."

 

We arranged for her to be cared for by a physician on the Eastern Shore, since she had no money to come back for periodic checkups. Anyway, traveling from her home and getting about in Baltimore would be too confusing for her, she thought. The physician sent word on several occasions that she was doing well, and in the press of work I did not think much more about Irene.

 

Then Christmas approached. The wards were decorated; the quiet of Christmas Eve descended. After dinner that evening I went over to the administration building where, each Christmas Eve for nearly had a century, the choir of the Memorial Baptist Church has sung carols for the staff. There was the sparkle of anticipation in the air. People away from home and loved ones, each alone with his own problems, yet all bound together in the common work of caring for the sick, stood or sat on the balconies of the four-story central rotunda, waiting. On the main floor below, the choir, gowned in cassocks, prayed softly around the large marble statue of Christmas, then burst into song.

 

The singing was magnificent, the scene was beautiful; yet I was terribly sad. This was my first Christmas away from home. I tried to concentrate on the singing, but doubts of my ability as a doctor, dissatisfaction with my own efforts, a feeling of unworthiness overcame me. Finally, the choir was singing the "Hallelujah Chorus" from the Messiah, and it was over. The choir moved on to the wards to sing for the patients.

 

As I turned to go back to my work, the porter at the front door beckoned to me. He handed me a box wrapped in brown paper, tied with a piece of red string. During the caroling, he said, a woman had slipped in and asked for me. He told her I was probably up on one of the balconies and he couldn’t call me until the caroling was finished. She said she couldn’t wait; she had only twenty minutes before the last bus left for home.

 

I took the package up to my room and opened it. Over the old brown paper were pasted Christmas decorations cut from newspapers. On one flap of the box was pasted half of an old Christmas card; it had a printed name, lined through with red crayon, and my name printed crudely on it instead. Inside the box were pieces of holly branches, obviously freshly picked.

 

I knew immediately who the donor was and why she couldn’t wait. She had made the long, unaccustomed trip to Baltimore, and now had a four-hour bus ride back to the Eastern Shore to get home for Christmas!

 

Freshly picked holly in a crudely decorated carton tied with a knotted piece of red string. A simple present from a poor uneducated woman – it was the greatest gift I have ever received. I looked out the window into the dark sky with it brightly shining stars. And I thought of that night some 1900 years ago. From a distance I heard the choir singing, "Bearing gifts, we traverse afar. . . ."

 

I knew then what I had wanted to know for some time.