Winter 2004
The author (AΩA, Medical College of Wisconsin, 1957) is honorary pediatrician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and retired director of emergency medicine at Morton Hospital in Taunton, Massachusetts. He has for the past four to five years participated in medical mission trips to remote villages in Central America, Romania, and Thailand. I’m in the mountains of Nicaragua. They grow coffee here and spawn poverty. We are in a village school, our hearty band of doctors and nurses. The people form long lines to see us; we’ll have trouble seeing them all today. Complaints are ordinary: backaches, stomach pain, and coughs. But there are exceptions. The six-year-old girl walked toward me, she squatted; I could almost hear the murmur across the room. I mention an operation, but the parents turn their heads and frown. “She’s too little,” they say, and I swallow a tear. That same day I saw the boy of four whose foot was clubbed. “Oh, yes,” I hear, “They could fix the foot in Managua, but there’s no money to get there.” I pass the hat among my colleagues and he goes. While waiting for who’s next, I look out the window. The line is long, the sky is darkening, the air grows cool and smells wet. Suddenly, a torrent of tropical rain pours down. The line doesn’t move, they’d lose their places. There must be magic in the rain.
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