"Can you see the new patient?"

I looked at the admission diagnosis and frowned. Even as a novice student a few months into clinical rotations, I knew the weight that "painless jaundice" carried. It always raised the concern of a pancreatic tumor quietly growing til it announced its presence by blocking flow through the liver and infusing skin with a characteristic yellow hue.

"My daughter has the same name as you."

"Oh, really? How old is she?"

"Seven and a half."

I didn't expect that. I thought she would have been older, because you were almost the same age as my mother was when she had the same disease. I foolishly applied the lens of my own experience and assumed your daughter would have been a teenager like I was. I paused, recovered, and finished the exam. I gave you a tight-lipped smile as I left your room.

"I can't believe you remember that."

My memory is a blessing as well as a curse. I wish that I could turn it on and off at will but it's pretty random. Antibiotic dosages slip my mind but I will recall the name of someone's boss only mentioned in passing. I struggle with memorizing passages but in my mind's eye I can visualize embarrassing childhood events with surprising accuracy. Sometimes I will forget someone's name right away but I can remember the name of their childhood pet months later.

I remember the good and the bad experiences - sometimes it seems that it's more of the latter than the former, though. Despite my eidetic recollections, there's months (if not years) of my childhood that I can't recall, or time periods that blur together in an indistinguishable reel of disjointed frames. I'm not sure why that is; maybe my mind tries to protect me from remembering some of the worst times.

Patient Zero: "You were just a child."

"Ami has cancer," he said to me. "But don't worry, she's going to get treatment - it's going to be OK." A decade and a half later, I still remember how he said that so matter-of-factly with the confidence unique to teenage boys. I was taken aback and confused. The concept of cancer to me, at age twelve, conjured up images of bald children in hospital beds and fundraisers. It didn't fit in with how I saw you. You were my mother -your role was to be steady and constant, especially given how recently you had become a single parent. You were not supposed to be sick.