When Crickets Cry

by Charles Martin

Then there are the doctors. The honest ones will tell you that few of us are immune to a bit of a God-complex. The system itself breeds the problem. Unlike CEOs, who receive feedback from their stockholders or boards of directors, doctors receive little to no correction. We feed off control. And in the operating room we are in total control; everyone is subservient to our smallest command. No argument. No negotiation. No question or protest. We prescribe, and people do. We extend a hand, and people jump. And with every saved life, we are affirmed. “Nice job, Doctor.” “That was good work, Doctor.” “Well done, Doctor.” Our mouths might say, “Oh, it was nothing, really,” but in our minds we’re saying, You bet it was good work. We feast on our own pride and are gluttons for our own self-promotion. And don’t think we leave it inside the OR. Because most of us have an over-developed sense of self, we treat most relationships the same way, which explains why we work twenty hours a day and have no home life, leave a wake of failed marriages, and send Christmas cards to our kids.

Hope is not the result of medicine or anything that science has to offer. It is a flower that sprouts and grows when others pour water upon it. I think sometimes that I spent so much time worrying about how to protect and strengthen the flower—even going so far as to graft in a new stem and root system—that I forgot to simply water it.