M y medical student Dov was finally getting a little softer around the edges taking his studies — and life — more seriously and instead of dreading the days he’d be tailing me at the clinic I was actually starting to appreciate him.
With each passing week he was becoming more proficient: better at diagnosing and more knowledgeable regarding treatment. I’d worked with plenty of students in my years of practice and what I really enjoyed about Dov was his blunt and direct curiosity. While it sometimes got him into hot water with my patients whose fragile psyches couldn’t always tolerate his frank and honest approach — some cases need a bit more gentleness than others — it was something we were working on. I didn’t want Dov to bury his personality just to focus and channel it.
Dov was always directing unexpected comments my way so it didn’t really surprise me when during a lull in between patients over a cup of Turkish coffee he threw me the following question: “Dr. Freedman what would you do if you weren’t a psychiatrist seeing patients?”
“Why do you have a winning lottery ticket for me?” I responded. “Because if I had a few billion I’d probably learn and teach Torah most of the time while working in a free clinic just to keep my skills up.”
