Our hidden capes

"I want to dedicate this award to my son, who has been wearing a Superman costume for the past 47 days."
"Yay Supermommy!" The 4-year-old yells from the back. We all laugh.
"Every day he asks me to tell him stories of people who need 'Help, help!'" More laughs. "Lots of people told him that they liked his cape when they came in, but the truth is that we all wear capes underneath our coats."

It's daunting. Knowing that in 3 days, I will become my patient's biggest advocate, the member of their health care team that sees them the most, knows the most about them. No matter how much we remind them that we are still only students, we become "Doc" to them. We will become, in a very real sense, heroes. Heroes who have to break the news of cancer to a man with 4 small children at home. Heroes who get to assist on emergency surgery to save someone's life. Heroes who bring their patients ice cream sandwiches, and who understand what it's like to be in an unfamiliar environment, with everyone speaking a language you don't understand, not knowing what will happen to you. It's daunting. And it's thrilling. I am about to embark on a journey that will teach me more and push me more than I would have ever dreamed. I will have the opportunity to touch people in their most vulnerable moments, to see real healing. It's a calling that has few equals in this world, and I don't say that out of arrogance, because I question every day whether I have what it takes, and why God brought me here. I say it out of reverence and awe for the things I know I will experience in my career, for the gift of being a physician. I hope that I will be able to share some of it with all of you, but the longer I'm in this field, the more I realize how hard it is for outsiders to understand the great responsibility we hold, the gravity of our decisions, the toll it takes on us, but how we wouldn't trade it for anything. (Again, I say that not out of arrogance, but awe.)

The resident (Supermommy) closed by thanking the students she'd had the chance to work with, commenting that many times she found her patients' rooms empty when she went looking for them. The students had taken their patients for a walk around the hospital. "And as they walked," she said, "I could just see a flash of red underneath their short white coats."