The Lives We Saved, The Life We Missed
There comes a moment in every doctor’s life when they pause—not because they finally have time, but because exhaustion leaves them no choice. In that pause, somewhere between the relentless demands of duty and the quiet depletion of self, a question rises from the silence: Was it worth it?
Last night, I sat at the dinner table with my children and my parents—a gathering far too rare, a constellation of faces I love the most. As laughter mingled with the aroma of food, my phone kept buzzing, its insistent vibration a familiar soundtrack to my life. I glanced at the screen and found it was Doctors’ Day. Messages began to arrive—some warm, others polite, a few copy-pasted, and most simply saying, “Thank you.” But instead of feeling celebrated, a quiet ache stirred in my chest—a heaviness unnamed but deeply familiar.
Looking around the table, I saw the ones who have shared me with strangers over the years. My children, who learned too early that Baba might not always be there; my parents, aging steadily while I charted progress notes for other people’s mothers and fathers. I wondered: How many moments had I missed? How many birthdays, conversations, and simple, irreplaceable days could have become extraordinary—if only I had been present?
Medicine took me away—not once, not for a season, but again and again. It never felt like a gentle decision, but rather like a current—strong, relentless, impossible to resist. People call it a calling, a noble path; perhaps it is. But beneath the surface, it’s something more—a silent contract demanding more than knowledge or skill. It asks for time without apology, presence without pause, taking youth in quiet increments, relationships in fragments, stillness almost entirely. Medicine didn’t just shape my life—it consumed it. And though I stood in service, often with pride—I cannot deny, it took everything.
While others built homes and collected memories, I buried myself in textbooks and call duties. While friends traveled, I memorized pharmacokinetics. While families laughed under warm lights, I stood beneath harsh ones—in casualty rooms, cath labs, and ICUs—where someone else’s crisis became mine. The world outside moved on but my world was measured in heartbeats, in the beeping of monitors, in silent prayers held in sterile corridors.
We were told that doctors are respected—and often we are—but respect is fragile and conditional. Sometimes it’s deeply felt, and at other times, it disappears the moment outcomes slip beyond control. The same hands that heal are suddenly doubted, questioned, even threatened. Intent is scrutinized, worth debated, as if skill alone can silence mortality. When grief comes—and it always does—it rarely stays quiet. It finds us, blames us, settles on our shoulders as if we summoned it ourselves.
If you enter this field for praise, you will leave hollow, because the applause fades. Gratitude, while real, is often momentary. What keeps us here is not admiration—it’s something deeper: perhaps an instinct, an obsession, or simply the quiet belief that this is what we were meant to do. And it’s not for recognition, not for reward, but because walking away never felt like an option.
By the time I looked up from the grind, I was in my forties. Life had passed like a train I was too busy to board. Eighteen-hour days and 3 a.m. calls became routine. A free weekend felt suspicious. Rest, family, reading a book without passing out—these became luxuries. The world outside my hospital window changed with the seasons; inside, time was measured by shifts, by the rotation of faces, by the endless cycle of hope and heartbreak.
I missed the weddings of my cousins, friends, and those I grew up with. Not because of emergencies, but because of exams, night shifts, and rounds. I remember the silence in my father’s voice when I told him I couldn’t attend. It wasn’t anger—just a softer, sadder acceptance. His elder son had chosen medicine, and medicine had claimed the memories. My absence became a quiet refrain in my family’s story—a shadow at celebrations, a missing face in every photograph.
I missed every Eid during residency. While others dressed in new clothes and shared meals, I was in the ER—witness to the mysterious threshold where life flickers: sometimes a spirit departing, sometimes a breath returning from the unseen. The festival reached me only through patients’ stories, or hurried, apologetic calls to family before returning to a gurney, a code blue, or an unstable pulse. My celebrations became the quiet victories of a revived heartbeat, the silent mourning of a life slipping away—the bittersweet privilege of standing between two worlds.
The body remembers what we try to forget. I have worked 36-hour shifts on caffeine, water, and willpower. I have performed procedures with an empty stomach and a heavy heart. I have been called in with fever, a limp, and grief. But I showed up—because someone needed me more. The fatigue settled in my bones, but the responsibility pressed deeper, pushing me forward when everything else begged for rest.
Medicine doesn’t just demand—it reshapes. You stop being a person and become a presence, a number, a dependable name on a rota—a resource in a system that doesn’t get sick, doesn’t say no, doesn’t slow down. You learn to override your own needs, to keep moving when your body begs for pause. Somewhere along the way, you forget how to place yourself anywhere near the top of your own list. You become the steady hand in a crisis, the calm voice in a storm—while your own storms rage silently, unseen.
We are expected to be endlessly competent, endlessly available, endlessly compassionate. And somehow—we try. But the toll is real. It shows in our posture, in our sleep, in our children’s questions, in our partner’s silence. The cost is etched into the lines on our faces, the heaviness in our steps, the longing in our eyes when we see lives we have missed unfolding without us.
And still—people say, “You charge too much.” As if what we offer can be priced in time alone. As if the cost of this life can ever truly be understood. They see the bill, not the birthdays missed, the tears swallowed, the years surrendered in the service of strangers.
We give up years and miss lifetimes. We hold the hands of strangers while our own families wait at home. There are wounds in medicine that never show on the surface: the patient you couldn’t save, the sound of a flatline in a room that was full of hope minutes earlier, the guilt of choosing duty over your daughter’s school play, your father’s illness, your own aching body. These wounds are invisible but deep—resurfacing in the stillness of night.
And yet—despite it all—we return, every day. Not because we’re unbreakable, but because even in the chaos, there are moments that hold us together: the pulse that returns, the patient who walks again, the family that murmurs, “Thank you for not giving up.” These moments don’t erase the sacrifice—but they give it meaning. They are the threads of hope that mend our weary souls.
My parents are proud of me. But I know the times I wasn’t there—when they needed a son and got silence instead. In this field, there is no real balance—only trade-offs. A career built on other people’s emergencies will cost you parts of your own life. And yet—if I had to do it again—yes, I would. Because for all its weight, medicine offers not perfection, but something deeper: a purpose deeply humane.
So, on this Doctors’ Day, I am not thinking about titles or milestones. I’m thinking of the hands I have held, the pulses I have steadied, and the lives I have touched without fully knowing. I am thinking of the moments that broke me—and the few that slowly put me back together. I am thinking of my family’s patience, my children’s resilience, my parents’ quiet pride, and the love that endured, even in absence.
We don’t ask for applause. We learn that the world claps for miracles—not for the daily, invisible grace of showing up. So we show up anyway ; in silence, in scrubs, in rooms where breath falters and time feels thin.
We don’t expect gratitude. But sometimes, we wish someone would see—not just the patient chart, but the invisible cost and the fragments of ourselves we leave behind at every bedside.
To every doctor who stayed beyond their strength, walked into rooms with a tired body and a full heart, who has gone home wondering if they did enough—this is for you.
May you be remembered not just for the lives you saved,
but for the quiet hours you lost.
The birthdays missed.
The dinners skipped.
The tears you never let fall.
The strength you gave away.
The heart you carried, and kept carrying.
Happy Doctors’ Day.
From one unseen heart to another—I see you. I honor you. I thank you.
Dr Showkat Hussain Shah is Consultant Interventional Cardiologist, GMC Anatnag
