Woman Left Her Son Among Rubble. Years Later, She Got Sick And Asked His Help

He started working at night and got to know the reality of an emergency room, the drama of the families, and how important his profession was to those people who came to him weakened and in need of help. Sometimes there were emergency calls in the middle of the night.

He showed his value as a professional and as a human being, and was soon hired by a large hospital in the city. Even so, he did not fail to take on a night shift at least once a week.

James had not revealed this to any other doctors, but he had let the reception staff know that whenever a young or elderly street person came into the emergency room in need of care, he would be happy to assist them. One early morning, a lady of about 50 came in with symptoms of intoxication.

When James arrived in the room to review the case, he put his hands to his mouth as soon as he found himself facing the patient. She looked very different and didn’t look 50, she looked at least 60.

But she was his biological mother. Now she was standing there, all washed up and needing urgent help to keep from overdosing.

James felt a slight dizziness. Her case was critical and she would need an urgent compatible blood transfusion.

Now James found himself in a dead end, since he would have to help the person who never protected him and who in all these years didn’t look for him or she would die right there in front of him. James realized that he would gain nothing by being petty.

This was the woman who gave him life needing help. Now it was time to give her his life as well.

James pulled himself together and began to attend to the woman, giving her injections, taking her blood pressure and heart rate. He went to the hospital administration and told them that his mother was the patient and that he could donate the blood she needed, as well as bear all the costs of the procedure.

Since James was a doctor beloved by the staff, everyone mobilized to expedite the treatment. It was not easy to stabilize her, but after many hours of procedures he managed to get his mother out of critical condition.

A Confrontation with the Past

To help her recovery, the still unconscious woman was transferred to a private ward where she would have better assistance. James’ shift ended hours ago and the sun was already shining high in the sky, but the young doctor decided to stay there until he was sure she would be okay.

It was almost noon when she woke up and got something to eat. James came into the room with an arrangement of flowers and wanted to know how she was feeling.

The woman said she was confused and didn’t remember much, but if she was in a hospital it must have been very bad. James said that she had almost left this life and that she urgently needed to be more careful or, who knows, take another direction in life.

The woman looked deep into the doctor’s eyes and for an instant James thought she recognized him. But the woman began to cry and said she didn’t know what else to do.

She drank and filled herself with drugs because she had been a terrible mother and a very bad person. Now all she wanted was to be able to forget everything she had done and everything she had lost in her life.

She then said that once she had a son, but she didn’t know where he was, nor where the few remaining photos of the boy were. She said that she had taken so many pills and shots of whiskey over the past 30 years that she could no longer remember the boy’s face.

These words struck James right on the nose. “Today he would be about your age, more or less. I wonder if you ever saw him passing by here sometime? Did you?”

James could not contain himself and hugged his mother. He cried silently on her shoulder.

She cried too, her face pressed against the doctor’s chest, not knowing that this was indeed her son. In her ear, he spoke.

“I did know him. And I will tell you to be at peace, because he forgives you. He forgives everything and he loves you very much!”

The woman didn’t know if the doctor was saying this just to console her or if the universe really had its mysterious ways of acting and he really had met her son one day. Either way, the woman hugged the doctor even tighter, as if he himself were her lost son.

A Promise of Reconciliation

The clinic was quite expensive and the woman did not understand why that doctor cared so much about her. She preferred to accept the offer and interpreted this as a sign, or a chance, to survive.

The woman asked if after rehab she would see the doctor again. James promised that if the rehab worked and she was free of her addictions, the woman would see him again, but beyond that, James would make it a point to contact her son and arrange a reconciliation meeting between the two.

The woman smiled and cried at the same time, a mixture of feelings that James had never seen before. On the day of her admission to the clinic, the woman was at peace and determined.

Before entering, she took an old photo out of her purse. It was a picture of little James, already quite weathered by time.

The woman took a good look at the picture and kissed it gently.

“I enter here as one person and leave here as another. I will do anything to find you again, my son,”

she whispered softly.

James held back the tears. For a second he thought about revealing right there that he was her son, but like the good doctor he was, he knew that the best thing for his own mother was to make her face that ordeal of cleansing her body and mind.

He said goodbye to the woman, who nodded back in his direction, and then walked into the clinic with her head held high. At that moment, the young man was sure that it was only a matter of time before he and his mother would be a real family, and this made James feel more complete than ever.