The patient, now more alert, turned his head toward her.
“I owe you an apology,” he said.
She looked surprised.
“For what?”
“For not listening. You warned me several times, and I kept telling you that you were worrying too much.”
“You don’t owe me an apology,” she replied gently. “I’m glad you stayed where you were when you started feeling worse.”
He looked down at his hands.
“I honestly thought I was wasting everyone’s time.”
“You’re never wasting our time by telling us about a new or changing symptom,” she said. “And you don’t have to wait until you feel seriously ill before asking for help.”
Those words stayed with him long after the immediate danger had passed.
In the days that followed, he began to understand something he had never really considered before: feeling well enough to talk did not necessarily mean his body was functioning normally.
He had assumed that a serious medical emergency would announce itself with unbearable pain or an unmistakable collapse.
