I never thought I would have to reckon with my own mortality in my twenties. But there I was, cut off from the world in an ICU quarantine room, a monitor ringing in my ear, tuberculosis and multi-organ failure closing in. Words swirled around me as I fought to stay awake, and all I could think was: This isn’t fair. If only they [the doctors] had checked my liver when I asked, and not dismissed me, maybe I wouldn’t be dying.
I recovered. I am better for it in ways I’m still discovering, though I grapple with my mortality daily. What I remember most from that time isn’t the fear; it’s the pregnant fellow who sat by my bedside, held my hand, looked me in the eyes, and said, “I am here.” She let me cry as I tried to reconcile whether my Catholic upbringing was enough to get me into heaven, or whether my faith in medicine had deemed me unworthy.
When I reflect on the course my life has taken, I feel gratitude more than anything else. I think of Rumi’s idea that being human is like keeping a guest house, that every difficult arrival, even grief or fear, is a visitor worth welcoming. I couldn’t have envisioned living through a life-and-death scenario of my own. I came face to face with the edge of where medicine has no reach. And still, I returned in love with a profession that carries so many flaws. It’s within those flaws that I found my niche (love, not just for what I do, but for the people who walk into my office).
That ICU stay changed how I show up for patients. I learned firsthand that being dismissed can cost you everything, and that being truly seen can carry you through the worst of it. So I try to be the person at the bedside now, the way she was for me.
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I believe the act of touch (of simple humanity) has become a lost art in medicine. We’re trained in the physical exam, but too many of us have grown robotic, automated, losing the person sitting right in front of us. It can feel like connecting with a patient means losing a piece of yourself. I feel the opposite. Not long ago, a postpartum patient sat across from me, overwhelmed and in tears, unsure if she was doing any of it right. I didn’t reach for a script or a checklist. I sat beside her, took her hand, and let her cry before we spoke about anything clinical at all. That silence, that brief physical presence, did more for her than any medication could have. It’s a form of empathy no algorithm can offer.
These are the subtle cues that make medicine an art of love: the soft smile when a patient talks about their newborn, the animated way someone describes their grandparent, holding the hand of a patient who has just lost someone and staying a moment longer than the schedule allows. The gentleness of this work gives me more than I can put into words.
I think often of Emily Dickinson’s meditations on death and dying, and they humble me. They remind me that as the world moves faster by the day, what matters most isn’t speed; it’s intention, the small kindnesses I choose to offer each patient. In those moments I find my own solace, and come back to the fact that medicine is, in the end, a practice. Add a sprinkle of love, and it has the potential to do a great deal of good.
AI may one day read a scan more precisely than I can, or reach a diagnosis faster than my own mind allows. But it cannot sit at a bedside and simply be present. It cannot hold a hand at exactly the right moment, or know when silence is the better medicine. That isn’t a gap in technology; it’s the space where the art of medicine, and the art of love, will always live. It’s the space that I will choose to occupy in my practice of medicine.
Crystal Romero is a resident physician.
