Last semester, while buried under mounds of biochemical reaction handouts and colored-pencil drawings of the cranial nerves, I collapsed on my sofa, consumed by a feeling of disorientation. Why was I here?

Unlike most of my classmates, I was never a “science person.” I didn’t care about MAP kinase or CD28. I wanted to be a healer. My passion was and is the healing power of words. I had always believed that in the magical space between the doctor and patient, the words spoken and emotions exchanged were the cornerstone of healing. Unable to see the relevance of my academic struggles, I began to investigate Ph.D. programs in English Literature. In college my accomplishments in the English department occasioned many professors to seduce me into applying to graduate school in the arts versus a career as a scientist. However, becoming a doctor was a childhood dream—and whatever clinical experiences I had at the time re-confirmed my commitment to attending medical school. Nevertheless, somewhere between orientation and the second Biochemistry exam, my romantic notions of medicine had sublimed into septic vapors—thus, I found myself drifting from one prestigious graduate program to another on the internet, looking for an answer. In the midst of my search for life’s meaning, the phone rang. It was my grandmother, Suvidyaba. Throughout our conversation about mundane affairs, my grandmother’s words awakened my memories, allowing me to visualize the struggles my family overcame in order for me to achieve my dream of attending medical school. My mind flashed to 1983, when my mother, father, and I arrived in Detroit from India with only six dollars to sustain us. I imagined how my parents must have felt while we moved from city to town, north and south, working odd jobs. Memories of the three of us living in a tiny motel room in Philadelphia—a room smaller than most garages—were intensified by recounting the smell the food my mother used to cook on a single plug-in grill. Pain swelled in my heart when I remembered how kids at school would laugh at my second-hand clothes and my parents’ blistered English accents. As I grew older, I knew the only way for me to improve our situation and help my family was to devote my merits to educating myself. I remembered how my mother used to drop me off at the library after school—how my eyes would shine when reading books on European history, African folktales, and human anatomy. I would see myself in those pictures, embracing knowledge so I could help others by listening to them and healing with empowering words and soothing bedside manners. As the years passed, my family’s livelihood did improve; consequently, any faith I invested in education seemed to be rewarded—so I forged ahead. In college I chose to pursue my childhood passion for the healing power of words by majoring in English. Through dissecting language from The Canterbury Tales to Beloved, I was mesmerized by the subtleties of human sensitivity: my original hypothesis that words carry with them an enormous power to heal was become more evident. Soon thereafter, I became intensely involved in diversity activism and the arts—poetry, film, and performance. Throughout college, I was either a writing tutor or a multicultural peer leader—a counselor to first-year students of color in academic, social, and personal development. In the most emotionally difficult moments with my advisees, I experienced how words—when carefully selected and crafted through the mouth with an infinite combination of inflections—can often help an ailing individual heal. My Ba’s voice finally dissolved my reverie as I began to hear sadness. She had an open-heart bypass a year ago and was experiencing complications. Her blood pressure was increasing and medications were not helping. Moreover, her cardiologist was neither returning her phone calls nor being cooperative. As my frustration grew, she said, “I can’t wait until you’re a doctor. Then you can take care of me and I will never have to worry.” Silence traveled through the lines between Minneapolis and Boston as tears streamed down my face. After hanging up the phone, I cried. I cried because through the power of her words, my Ba had healed me. My motivation and passion became as clear as they had ever been. From that day forward, anytime I would look in the microscope, I would see my Ba’s blood; furthermore, the deeper I focused, I saw that her blood represented all of humanity. Since that day, I have befriended science as a necessary ally in the fight against human suffering. While interviewing a woman with metastatic breast cancer, I not only observed the clinical relevance of desmosomal disintegration, but I also invoked words of hope from the poet Keats, whose own battle against tuberculosis heightened his sensibility toward mortality, and learned that our lives are indeed finite, but our service to others is infinite—and that is the very art of healing.