WILLPOWER MELTDOWN SOMETIMES

A resident on duty called to tell me that a man in his sixties had presented with a severe headache and dysarthria and that a brain MRI had revealed a fresh infarction in the right cerebellum. I went to the hospital to see him in person. His ex-wife was already there. I didn’t know why. Did she really need to come to the hospital? The next day I went to his room and there were two girls there with his ex. The girls looked like his daughters. They had gotten divorced because they had decided never to see each other again, right? Can there really be good relationships after a divorce? I couldn’t imagine that. On Sunday, when he was discharged, he was alone. He said, “you work on Sunday? It’s tough.” He smiled so kindly that I was surprised, because he had always had an angry face in the hospital and I had never seen him smile before.