One At a Time

By TAD BARTIMUS

It's easy to destroy lives. A stick of dynamite, a can of gasoline and a match bring down a building. A sniper's bullet terrorizes a town. A firebombing destabilizes a country. The media deluge that inevitably follows catastrophe swamps us with the perpetrators' evil. Even living thousands of miles away from the tragedy, we're infected by it.

In our ever-shrinking and interconnected world, the Washington, D.C., sniper, the bomber in Bali, and the terrorists in Kuwait all disturb our peace of mind and sabotage our sense of well-being. Even if we haven't been affected directly, we live with the fear.

It took an extreme example to snap me out of all of the malaise and horror. Having lunch with my friend Dani, a pediatrician, was an antidote. As a doctor sworn to "do no harm," she's committed to saving lives, not destroying them. Working 18-hour days, often seven days a week, Dani devotes her life to helping sick children get well, or at least get better.

Because her skills are in such demand, we seldom see one another. When we do, it's inevitable that, just as our waiter brings the soup, my friend's cell phone rings. Excusing herself, she stands out in the cold for an update on a critically ill baby girl suffering from pneumonia who arrived by air ambulance the night before. The news is good. The baby is still on a ventilator, but her vital signs are stable. That means Dani can stay for her soup.

It's a rare luxury, because interruptions are the normal pattern of her life. When duty calls, Dani leaves anyone, including her husband, daughter and mother, to tend to patients. To be her friend is to accept her cell phone and pager, too. If she seems distracted, she probably is -- with good reason.

Dani was already a wife, mother and Ph.D when she started medical school. Halfway through her eight years of training, her first husband died of cancer. Despite grief, financial hardship and sole responsibility for her daughter, she persevered. Her dream was to treat some of America's most disadvantaged citizens. For the past 10 years, she has.

My pediatrician friend is everything a terrorist is not. A terrorist is full of hate; she overflows with compassion. A terrorist maims and kills indiscriminately, hoping to claim as many victims as possible. She focuses on healing, one child at a time.

As headlines trumpet ever more death and destruction committed by hate-filled zealots against innocents, I need to pay more attention to the good that one person can accomplish when he or she is committed to kindness, compassion and decency.

Until recently, the full impact of a phrase penned by Dutch teen-ager Anne Frank had eluded me.

"I still believe people are good," Frank wrote, shortly before the Nazis who occupied Holland during World War II rounded up her family and sent her to die in a concentration camp.

We can't all be selfless pediatricians like my friend Dani. But we each need to do what we can, when we can, wherever we can, for as long as we can. The world needs good people now, more than ever before.

© 2002 The Women Syndicate

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