He ran away at thirteen. Jobs came and went. Friends disappeared. Shelters became home. The worst part wasn’t the cold or the hunger – it was being invisible.
The seizure hit like lightning – violent, sudden, unforgiving. One minute, Jake was trembling on the hospital bed, sweating and muttering through the fog of alcohol withdrawal. The next, his body convulsed uncontrollably, his eyes rolled back, and vomit surged up, choking him, entered his lungs. Nurses rushed in. A Code Blue was called.
Within hours, he developed pneumonia and sepsis spread like fire in dry brush. He was intubated, sedated, paralyzed. Jake went into septic shock, requiring pressors to keep his heart functioning. His kidneys failed - we didn’t think he’d make it.
Most evenings, as the chaos of the ICU gives way to a sterile hush of night, I follow a quiet ritual. I stop by the room of my sickest patient before going home. Not to talk. Not to explain lab results or prognosis. Just to sit. To be present.
For many nights, Jake said nothing. He couldn’t – he was unconscious. Jake’s body, somehow, fought back. The antibiotics worked. The ventilator came off. Dialysis weaned.
Jake woke up – gaunt, with tubes going into, and out of his body. Eyes rimmed red from the pain of detox – he started to speak. I listened. No notes. No judgments.
He talked about starting to drink at age seven. A swig of vodka stolen from his father’s cabinet. His parents’ divorce – the fighting and yelling, day after day. He ran away at thirteen. Couch-surfing. Dropped out of school at fifteen. By twenty-one, alcohol was his only reliable companion. Jobs came and went. Friends disappeared. Shelters became home. The worst part wasn’t the cold or the hunger – it was being invisible.
No one saw him. Except his mother. She came to the hospital every day, sat in the corner of the room, and cried. She told me how she had done everything in her power to help her son. How he had disappeared with no way of knowing where he was, or even if he was alive, sometimes for months at a time.
Gradually Jake recovered. He could eat. He could walk. Eventually, he could leave. On the day of discharge, I stood by the door. Jake was in a wheelchair, a duffel bag on his lap.
“If you keep doing to your body, what you’ve been doing,” I said, calm but firm, “you’ll be dead in three months.”
Two and a half years later, a sharply dressed man in a tailored blue suit and sunglasses walked into the hospital lobby and asked for me by name. When I appeared, the man smiled.
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
“No,” said I, puzzled.
“I’m Jake. You sat with me when I was dying. Even when I couldn’t talk. You saw that I was more than just a lost cause when no one else had – not my mother, not my friends. No one. That day you told me I’d be dead in three months – I believed you. Since then, I haven’t had a drop of alcohol. I got a GED and started my own business – landscaping and snow removal. My mother lives with me now in a nice apartment. I’m saving up for a house. And I’m in love with someone who really believes in me – just like you did.”
He reached out his hand. “I came to say thank you. You didn’t just save my life. You gave me the courage to change it.”
"Thank you," I answered, "but the courage was always yours – I just made room for you to see it."
Treating patients is more than standard of care protocols. More than evidence-based medicine. Jake's story highlights the importance of being present, not just as a skill we possess, but as an act of empathy and understanding.