05/24/2026
In preparation for my neurology appointment this week, I reviewed pages and pages of test results. Amongst a truly exhausting list of tests and ordering physicians, I recognized a now familiar name and today’s date, only from one year ago.
I met Ben in the ER exactly one year ago today. WILD! When I later posed a spontaneous series of questions to him about health equity, challenges to providing the best quality of care in the ER and what might make it better, I never could have imagined this unforeseen collaboration.
Now, here I am preparing to present our collaborative resource at Dartmouth in a little over a month!
In honor of this truly unexpected evolution of events, I’m re-sharing the story I submitted to Enloe outlining the day it all began in the ER. Although the hospital remained unmoved and seemingly immune to my heartfelt letter about the unfortunate erasure of my story at the ceremony, ultimately, the person whose validation matters most shared his appreciation.
In this private gesture of gratitude, I realized that my initial motivation for submitting the story to “teach the system” a lesson was grandiose and naive from its inception. Authentic compassionate and human connection doesn’t demand public adoration or applause from a sea of strangers. Teachable moments aren’t manufactured in captive audiences. Instead they thrive on the threads of spontaneously that accompany raw moments of unchosen vulnerability, that greet you when you least expect them, beneath the piercing sun setting ablaze a landscape of cracked asphalt.
My lifelong infatuation with cajoling society into falling in love with me enough to cultivate social change suddenly seems frivolous. Maybe recognizing moments of genuine connection, compassion and spontaneous togetherness are in fact the ethereal markings of love in this life, after all.
Here’s my submission:
As a frequent flyer in the hospital and somebody with a long history of chronic complex health conditions, my experiences with Ben have changed not only how I feel about medicine but also how I feel about myself.
“Hi, I’m Ben,” the doctor says, reaching to shake my hand.
“Hi, Ben… That’s what you want me to call you?“
He smiles the kind of all-encompassing grin that tugs on his eyes. He eases me back onto the gurney, inquiring with a cultured patience that I’ve never seen in the emergency room, about what’s been going on.
When he asks about my history of medical conditions, I cackle with involuntary maniacal laughter that reveals my state of exhaustion and extensive matriculation within the strange parallel universe of medicine.
“How much time do you have?“
“I’m here all night. Give it to me!“
This unusual interaction with a doctor is further noteworthy as we continue to talk; to dialogue like peers, both of us offering unexpected tidbits of humor and sarcasm. He seems riveted by my existence, attentive to every symptom, even those going beyond the acute reasons for my visit.
I am flabbergasted by the genuine attention, kindness and even love that seems to spin from his being, bathing this beige hospital room with a kind of opalescent levity that shines.
We work in tandem, eventually agreeing to order further testing that will reveal I have E. coli, two strains of which can, apparently make you miserable and extremely ill.
After the diagnosis has been made and the treatment begun, I find myself thinking of other questions I wished I could’ve asked him. I casually express my desire to run into him at the local health food store I typically frequent, wondering what it might be like to see him in “real life.”
And then, it happens. In between exhausting visits to the hospital, we happen to somehow be in the same place at the same time. He bursts through the double doors of the store, flip-flops slapping the asphalt as he makes a b-line for me.
“Briana!” He says, his face breaking into the warmest of grins, personifying sunshine itself.
“Ben!” As he wraps his arms around me, I can scarcely believe this is happening. I lean into him, marveling at this moment, surveying him as he peers into my face with his crystalline eyes.
His attentiveness, kindness and love seems to multiply in the parking lot, and we methodically move through a series of follow-up questions, the same ones I was wishing I could ask him in this exact scenario. I can’t help but laugh hysterically when he offers to recheck some body parts, here, in the parking lot, under the sweating sunshine.
“Are you going to charge my insurance for this?”
His already effervescent presence ascends higher. We both crack up, brushing up against each other like the oldest of friends, embracing with visceral familiarity.
Something foreign and unprecedented doubles beneath the surface of my exhaustion, a sensation I could never anticipate feeling in the presence of a doctor, with the kind of person who destroyed me on the day I was born. Something a lot like love.
Before parting ways, he tells me that should I need to return to the emergency room, to ask for him specifically and that he will come out to the waiting room and find a way to get me in faster. His magnetic blue eyes drink me in as though I am the most marvelous creature, as though all of my broken bits are intact, perfect.
In the coming days, I will think of him often, attempting to piece together what feels like an unforeseen long overdue completion of a healing cycle. I will ponder the incredible and seemingly impossible transformation of the enemy into the friend, and I will allow myself to luxuriate in the fact that I just love this guy, Ben.
Love.
It’s the last thing I would ever expect to find in the hospital, and again, in the parking lot of the grocery store.
Maybe, just maybe, the unfurling of the fist I’ve had choked around the fear of medicine, trauma, and my own humanity, has loosened enough to be a little more free.
Now that’s what I call good medicine.
