Crossroads

Abstract

“What are you doing here?” a concerned co-worker wonders out loud. I begin searching for the answer, the summary statement. I consider my upbringing, my years of high-priced education and medical training, and my comfortable life-style. Yes, I am privileged. And yes, I am privileged to work with people living in poverty. Fortunately, Sadie answers for me. “We need him here. Don’t you see all those patients at the window!”

I feel ashamed to pounce upon the page with a narrative that is so open, explicit, so personal. In one sense it is a vivisection, the cutting up of a living creature to see how it works, rummaging among the still-quivering flesh for its soul.

— Richard Selzer, Raising the Dead, 1993