Grandma had no idea what I'd just survived, hidden behind those few words.
She simply thought I'd had a rough time at the hospital. Gently stroking my head, she comforted me softly, just as she had when I was little.
"What doctor doesn't get tired?" she said. "But as long as you do right by your patients and your own conscience, the exhaustion is worth it."
I looked at her wrinkled face, and for a moment I was transported back to that winter night sixteen years ago.
That year, Lakewood was hit by a blizzard not seen in decades.
At two in the morning, a man from the outskirts braved the snow to knock on the clinic door. He said his pregnant wife had suddenly developed abdominal pain and begun bleeding, and the village roads were sealed by heavy snow, so the ambulance couldn't get throu
