The Hard Part Was Never the Exam

The year I sat my exams, my child was gravely ill. I sat them anyway. I failed, and I have never once been able to feel bad about that, because I knew exactly where my mind was, and it was in the only place it could have been.

There is a particular kind of impossible in trying to hold an entire profession’s worth of knowledge in your head while your whole heart is somewhere else, at a bedside, terrified, willing a small person to be all right.

I did get through, the time after. People congratulated me, and I thanked them. What I rarely said out loud was the truth of it: the exam was never the hard part. The hard part was being a parent and a doctor inside the same breaking moment, and finding that I had no choice but to be both at once.