The nurse practitioner, a cardiologist, and a few other people in a variety of colors of scrubs surrounded the patient’s gurney. Groaning in pain, the sedatives began to slowly trickled into his system. I stood back a couple of feet, observing. In my blue scrubs, I appeared to belong as one of the staff but I was merely an observer in the Stanford Medical Youth Science Program. Watching and listening to every second of the moment, the cardiologist began the heart ultrasound. The patient’s arms lay still, the absence of his wedding ring left only the crease of untanned skin.

Lub-dub lub-dub lub-dub. The patient’s heart had supraventricular tachycardia. As my nerves met the calm manner of the cardiologist, he turned the monitor toward me and began to explain the steps to follow. A hand wrapped in a blue glove gracefully pointed to the monitor, a hand of wisdom, a hand that healed the hearts of those sick. “This is the right atrium, look at how quickly the tricuspid valve….” his words were overtaken by a memory.

A year prior, I stood next to my mom as she lay in the patient’s bed of the cardiologist. The doctor pressed the transducer probe into her chest as he explained to me the heart problems he saw in my mom’s heart. I struggled to find the correct words to translate to my mother that her heart was experiencing bradycardia. She has been sick with chronic rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia and many other painful diseases. To say to my mother the translation that her heart had bradycardia was adding onto an ongoing list of diseases. I had spent years learning as much as I could about her issues in hopes that I could one day help her through my knowledge of medicine. As the words filled the small cardiologist office, “Tu corazón late espanzo lento.” The bitter words intercepted with sound of coming from the old monitor. Lub-dub lub-dub lub.  

My memory vanished into the sound of the man’s cardiogram sound. The cardiologist placed the electrode pads on the man’s upper chest. All of those who surrounded the gurney simultaneously stepped away, “Clear Clear!”. I braked my body into the ground as the man’s whole body jumped into the air from the charging electrocution. Eyes turned to the EKG screen the leads showed a normal beating heart. “His heart is back to normal.”

These words flooded the drought sorrow emotions in the room. The nurse practitioner led me to the waiting room where a woman was pacing, her anxiety penetrated my skin. The nurse translated to her, “El corazón de su esposo ha vuelto a la normalidad, no necesitará el trasplante de corazón.” That joy that radiated across her face was the same joy I felt when I first saw my mother walk without pain or a wheelchair.

4 years prior, I stood next to my mom as we walked through the local grocery store for the first time together, after 2 knee surgeries. The joy that could only be created by good news and taken away so easily. The wife received the news I wish I could have translated to my mother in that small cardiologist office. As I stood in front of the wife with a smile on my face for her, I could not help but feel the pain within me, remembering the bitter words, I translated the year prior. I understood that I wanted to be the one who would be able to tell the good news to a patient but even more, help a patient who could have received bad news. As I looked to the nurse practitioner and back to the relieved wife, I knew this was where I wanted to be and what I was meant to become.