“Just like that. Thank you for your room. The family is collecting their belongings and should be out soon. They’re calling a funeral home for arrangements. You can let your nurses know they can take the body down to the morgue. Of course, since she was admitted to me, I’ll call the ME and Organ Donation. She’s my patient anyway, so I’ll do the death certificate.” He patted me on the shoulder, smiled, and left to go back to the ICU.

I walked over to the counter to get the pen I’d left there and stood writing my follow-up notes on patients. In truth, I wanted to get a glimpse of Ms. Giannetta’s room. I counted three, possibly four generations around her. Then her family came out in pairs—toddlers clinging to parents and aunts, middle-aged couples, elderly adults who appeared to be siblings. Tina and Crystal removed the monitor and folded the sheet gently around Ms. Giannetta’s arms. I marveled at how she had waited, how she had known. I marveled at how she hadn’t left until all her family had arrived. How she had returned to say her last good-byes and only then had taken her final rest.

I felt a tap on my shoulder that made me jump.

“Oh, sorry, Doc. Just me.”

It was Al, one of the custodial staff employees. He’d always check in with me about his health goals. He’d lost weight, which had allowed him to wean himself off most of his medications for high blood pressure and diabetes. I was happy to cheerlead him along from the sidelines.

He smiled, opening his arms. I leaned in to return his hug.

“What’s going on?” he said. “You look spooked. How’s your day going?”

“Where to begin, Al? Where to begin?” I laughed.

Should I start with the little girl who had been beaten unconscious by her father? How would I tell him that her silenced body had called out to be heard, cared for, saved? I wondered if I should go into detail about how the body can house a million truths that may not be readily apparent on the surface, or how so much wisdom flows beneath the skin. Or should I begin with the old woman who had returned from death to say her final good-byes to her family? How would I tell him that her body had been ready and at peace, but that there had been one final task for her spirit to complete before she transitioned? Should I explain that nothing in my medical books or in “science” could explain that when she was dead, she came back just long enough to wait for her loved ones to gather by her side?

Or maybe I should start by telling Al that this had been a most painful year—or rather, series of years. Should I tell him that it was probably exactly because the challenges I’d faced had taken me to the brink of despair that I had been able to uncover a newfound freedom? Should I explain that my body was punching out a message to my heart and soul, that I had learned to tap into the message again and again between shifts and heart tugs, trying to translate, but that I hadn’t yet fully grasped the dialect? Should I add that I felt it had to be a message to love more no matter what, to be happy now no matter what?

Or maybe I could start by telling him that I was finally figuring out that all bodies ache with a wisdom that wants to be appreciated. And that if I were still enough to listen, if I were brave enough to be vulnerable and courageous enough to have faith in the potential of this life, I would see that I was already healed.

Baby girl Jenny would, in all likelihood, wake up to be reborn. Ms. Giannetta had had her resurrection as well. I, too, felt as if I had lived and died and lived again in the span of this one shift.

What I managed to say was “Al, this has been a crazy day in a crazy, crazy decade.”

“You okay?” he asked with genuine concern.

“I’m good. And I will be better, too.”

“You’re gonna leave us, aren’t you?”

I smiled at him, both not wanting to disappoint and not wanting to lie. “No, Al, not right now. I mean, I hope to come up with other ways to serve, other ways to be a healer, but patient care is a part of that goal, too.”

“You know, Doc, folks here come and go. The good ones are pushed out, and the bad ones get promoted. I hope you stay. What you said about healing—that’s why we need you here. You care about healing.”

With that, I took the deepest, most warming breath of the day and then let it go, fully refreshed.

“Thank you, Al. You don’t even know.”

I gave his arm a squeeze before leaving to pack up my coffee cup, water bottle, and bag. I would figure it out. I’d finish out the rest of this night, this week, this month, and then this year strong, all the while listening for what I needed to hear. I remembered something I had read—truth is that which never changes—and it occurred to me that that eliminated most things. In my commitment to loving true things deeply, I had let everything else fall away in its own time and in its own way. I made a plan to wake up and practice yoga from this space of integrity tomorrow morning, whatever yoga or tomorrow might bring.

“Night, Al!”

“Good night, Doc!”

Epilogue

There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul, a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were.

—HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN

Brokenness can be a remarkable gift. If we allow it, it can expand our space to transform—this potential space that is slight, humble, and unassuming. It may seem counterintuitive to claim the benefits of having been broken, but it is precisely when cracks appear in the bedrock of what we thought we knew that the gravity of what has fallen away becomes evident. When that bedrock is blown up by illness, a death, a breakup, a breakdown of any kind, we get the chance to look beyond the rubble to see a whole new way of life. The landscape that had been previously obscured by the towers of what we thought we knew for sure is suddenly revealed, showing us the limitations of the way things used to be.

Of course, many of us choose to live and die with that very space uncharted. Like Mr. Spano, I, too, have been so fed up with what felt like indomitable desolation that I just sifted through the wreckage and then shouldered it, dragging it along behind me, bent over by the weight of sorrow. But this devastation is a crossroads with a choice: to remain in the ashes or to forge ahead unburdened. Here is the chance to molt into a new nakedness, strengthened by the legacy of resilience to climb over the debris toward a different life.

Jeremiah wept blood into my hands in the same way that Erik’s entrails wrenched him to truth. Days before baby Jenny lost her innocence to the brutality of her parents, Vicki reclaimed her freedom by rebirthing herself past cycles of abuse into a new, healthy world of her choosing. When the stories of my relationships, personal life, and career path were stripped away, I finally got to what was real: True happiness only and always comes from within. In these and countless other ways, there is no gain without loss. Then—there it is! First in the descent and then in the emergence from this dark night of the soul lies true integration. True caring, indeed, true living, comes from being able to hold peace and love for oneself, and from sharing that unwavering, unconditional love, knowing that all life depends on this.

This is why I choose to stand with Mary and Dominic at the threshold. Medicine, like yoga, like the entirety of this existence on earth, is a daily practice. It is the opportunity, should we choose it, to heal the human body and spirit. By healing ourselves, we heal each other. By healing each other, we heal ourselves.

This is my practice. These are my stories.

So, this is not a book about a romance or a chronicle of loss. It is a story of love rebuilt better; the story of a butterfly birthed from goo; the story of newly grown wings that beat to a higher vibration to soar in a place of unconditional love because the truest part of me has always known and just now understands that this is where healing happens and this is where healers abide.