The Good Doctor

It was 5:03 on a cold and snowy January morning. The doctor entered the room while the family was mourning their daughter’s death. The mother, whispering sweet words of love to the dead child, and the grandfather, saying a prayer in Mandarin, created an atmosphere of some sacred temple. Unnoticed, the doctor sat down on a visitor’s chair, hiding his face with his trembling hands.

During the delivery’s 3rd hour, the mother gave one last push and the doctor was able to hold the child’s head with his two hands. However, while pulling, trying to drown out the echoes of the mother’s cries, one hand slipped out of place, breaking the baby’s neck, killing the child instantly.

Dr. Brandeis Borresen, the 35 year old son of a farmer, had been working at the hospital for a little over a year. Coming from a small Pennsylvania town, he worked his father’s cornfield to pay off medical school. He eventually chose to be an obstetrician, relocating to work in Boston at Massachusetts General Hospital.

It was mid-April when he moved into his Back Bay apartment. He was never too keen on living in the city. Philadelphia was terrible to him. After one semester at the University of Pennsylvania, he decided to commute two hours to classes to evade the noise and pollution.

However, once he felt the fresh April rain while walking through the Public Garden, seeing the weeping willows sway so gently, the leaves dragging like fingertips on the water, he knew the sweet sadness of the small city on the hill was the change of scenery he needed.

He walked home from the hospital after every shift, no matter how tired, as he felt that he would somehow meet a love, in his mind, by an act of God. And by an act of God, he did meet a girl.

She was a Harvard grad student who worked at Trident, a bookstore and cafe on Newbury Street.

He accidentally elbowed her in the face, or she ran into his elbow (both will admit that it was their fault,) while she ran into work late from class.

For the next week, he sat at the same seat on the countertop, hoping it would be her shift. Within that week, he saw her twice, and in one great force of confidence, he asked her out to dinner, “…and not in this cafe, I can’t stand sharing your attention!”

The two fell in love and she became pregnant. For the next nine months, Dr. Borresen was in love with life, with work, with the city. But it was with Kim, the Chinese mother of his child in which he felt more love than anything else in the world.

It was a cold and snowy January morning, around 2 am, when Kim went into labor.