The kindness of strangers...

Some days, I see things on my job that make me feel that the human race is damned.  Doomed to a miserable hell by man's inhumanity to man.

Then, sometimes, I get to see things that remind me that kindness exists in the world.  And it restores my hope for humanity.

I got a patient one day, brought in by private vehicle.  She was nearly 80, and so skinny as to be skeletal.  She had a giant bruise on her forehead and dried blood all over her face.  Her next door neighbor, maybe 30, who has no relationship to her other than proximity, checks on her every day.  She has no family.  No one. The neighbor, who had to get up to the bathroom in the middle of the night, noticed my patient's light on.  He then went over to check and found the patient on the floor, picked her up and brought her to ER.

He stayed with her for hours, though she was confused and couldn't even tell me her own name.  I cleaned her up, started an IV, drew blood and did all the other things we do to check on little old folks who fall under circumstances when no one saw them fall and we have to figure out why they fell, what kinds of injuries were caused from the fall, etc. 

As she was hydrated with IV fluids and started to become more lucid, she awoke,  looked across at her neighbor and smiled and said, "Hey, buddy.  How ya doin'?"  The neighbor smiled with such relief.

I wanted to hug both of them.