The Girl Who Held My Stethoscope

They say teachers shape lives, but sometimes, it's the students who teach you the lessons you never knew you needed. Her name was Areeba—barely nineteen, timid yet bright-eyed, standing at the back of the ward with her notebook clutched to her chest like a lifeline.

She had come as part of a shadowing program—a one-week hospital internship for pre-med students to observe and learn. I had nearly declined the assignment; my days were already overloaded with rounds, paperwork, and the emotional weight that came with watching life and death dance so closely in a hospital corridor.

But something in her gaze reminded me of myself when I first walked into a hospital—young, idealistic, hopeful.

"Aap Dr. Marwan hain?" she asked hesitantly.

I nodded.

"Main aap ke sath rounds lena chahti hoon. Mujhe aapse seekhna hai."

There was sincerity in her voice that I couldn't ignore. And so, Areeba became my shadow for the week.

At first, she said very little, quietly scribbling notes while I attended patients. But I noticed her eyes—how they softened when she saw a child smile in the pediatric ward, how they welled up when we lost a patient to cancer. She was absorbing everything, not just the medical jargon, but the emotions, the silences, the sighs, the unspoken pain.

One afternoon, after a particularly tough day in the oncology ward, I found her sitting alone in the canteen, her eyes red.

"Sab thik hai?" I asked.

She hesitated, then whispered, "Dr. Marwan, kya aap kabhi toot gaye thay?"

I was stunned for a moment. No student had ever asked me that. I looked at her, a girl full of promise, sitting with the same uncertainty I once carried in my early days.

I nodded slowly. "Haan, bahut baar. Aur har baar, kisi patient ne, kisi chhoti muskurahat ne, mujhe jodne ka kaam kiya."

She looked down at the table and said, "Mujhe darr lagta hai ke main emotionally strong nahi ho paungi. Main kaise doctor banoongi agar har patient ki takleef mujhse bardasht nahi hoti?"

Her words hit me hard, because I had asked myself the same thing countless times.

So I told her a story.

There was a time in my early career when I lost a young boy to a heart condition that we couldn’t treat in time. His mother cried in my arms, and I went home and cried alone. For days, I questioned if I was cut out for this profession. But then I remembered why I chose medicine—not because I could save everyone, but because sometimes, simply being there was enough.

"Agar tumhara dil dukhta hai, iska matlab hai tum insaniyat nahi bhooli," I told her. "Aur isi insaniyat ki wajah se tum ek achi doctor banogi."

From that day, she changed. Not that she didn’t still cry, but now she smiled more too. She asked more questions, stayed longer hours, and spoke to patients with a tenderness that couldn’t be taught.

On the last day of her internship, she brought me a small box. Inside was a stethoscope charm attached to a keychain.

"Yeh aap ke liye," she said, her eyes shining. "Main isay ‘The First Step’ kehti hoon. Kyunki aap ne mera pehla kadam itna yaadgar banaya."

I smiled, but I didn’t know what to say. In my years of practice, through all the lives I’d touched and lost, through all the pain and healing, no one had ever given me something that small yet so deeply meaningful.

Years passed. I forgot many names, many faces, but not hers.

Then, one morning, I received an email.

Subject: Dr. Areeba Ahmed—First Posting

It was from her. She had become a doctor.

"Aaj mera pehla din hai, aur main wahi stethoscope charm apni pocket mein lekar gayi hoon jo aap ne mujhe diye thay. Jab kabhi bhi mushkil lagta hai, main usay chhoo leti hoon aur mujhe yaad aata hai: 'Agar tumhara dil dukhta hai, iska matlab hai tum insaniyat nahi bhooli.'"

I sat in silence, rereading her message over and over. In that moment, I didn’t feel exhausted or broken. I felt proud, renewed, and grateful.

In mentoring her, I had rediscovered myself.

Sometimes, we give others strength without realizing they’re doing the same for us.

She may have held my stethoscope for a week, but she held my heart forever.