The Taxi Driver Who Remembered Everyone

The Taxi Driver Who Remembered Everyone

By Abdul Muhammad

The first morning I met him, I was late for my shift. The sun had barely risen, and the streets still smelled like rain. I waved frantically at the yellow taxi slowing near the curb.

The driver rolled down his window. He was an older man with silver hair under a faded cap and kind, deep-set eyes.

“Hospital?” he asked.

“Yes, please. City General,” I said, sliding into the back seat.

He nodded, pulling into traffic without another word. The cab smelled faintly of cardamom and worn leather. On the radio, an old song hummed softly. For the first time that week, I felt my shoulders unclench.

When we reached the hospital, I paid the fare. He gave me a small, almost secret smile and said, “See you tomorrow, Doctor.”

I didn’t think much of it until the next morning — when he was already waiting outside my apartment building.


---

For the next three weeks, I saw him every morning, almost without fail. At first, we rode in silence, the city rushing by in a blur of headlights. But gradually, he started talking.

“You know,” he said one morning, “I once drove a woman who was about to give birth. Right there, in the back seat. She named the baby after me.” He chuckled, eyes shining in the rearview mirror.

The next day, he told me about a man who cried quietly all the way to the airport, leaving his hometown for good. Another day, he remembered a schoolgirl who used to pay with coins she kept in a plastic toy purse, always exact change.

He spoke with a strange tenderness, as if each passenger was a chapter in a book only he had read.

I found myself listening more closely every day, waiting for the next story. It was a relief, after nights filled with beeping monitors and cold fluorescent lights, to hear about ordinary lives moving through the city.


---

One morning, after a particularly brutal night shift — two code blues, one lost patient, and endless rounds — I slumped into the back seat, barely able to keep my eyes open.

He glanced at me through the mirror and said softly, “Long night?”

I nodded.

He was quiet for a moment, then said, “There was a boy once. A medical student. He used to sit just where you are. Always looked tired. Always had a notebook. One day, he told me he wasn’t sure he could keep going. Too much death, he said. Too much weight.”

My heart stuttered.

“What happened to him?” I asked.

The driver smiled faintly. “He kept going. He graduated. He’s a surgeon now.”

I swallowed hard. I didn’t ask how he knew that.


---

A few days later, it happened again.

He started talking about a young girl who used to get into his cab every Sunday with a bunch of flowers.

“She said they were for her father,” he said. “Grave’s not far from here. She never cried, but her hands shook every time.”

I froze. My father’s grave was just two blocks from the route we were on. When I was a teenager, I used to visit every Sunday — always with flowers.

“Did you… drive her recently?” I asked carefully.

He shook his head. “No. Many years ago. But I remember every face. Every story.”

The city lights flickered across his profile. I felt a chill run down my spine, though the cab was warm.


---

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about his words. How could he have remembered me from all those years ago? There must have been hundreds — thousands — of passengers since then.

The next morning, I decided to ask him.

“Do you really remember everyone you drive?”

He looked at me through the mirror, his expression unreadable.

“Not everyone,” he said slowly. “But some people… leave a mark. You’re one of them.”

“Why?” I asked, my voice quieter than I expected.

He smiled — that same small, secret smile from our first ride.

“Because you’re still carrying so many stories inside you,” he said. “And one day, you’ll need someone to remind you that you’re more than the sad ones.”

We pulled up to the hospital. I sat there for a long moment, staring at my own tired reflection in the window. When I finally got out, I realized I hadn’t asked his name.

The next day, he wasn’t there.


---

Days turned into weeks. I took different taxis, buses, even walked to work sometimes. But I never saw him again.

Still, every time I passed the spot where he used to wait, I found myself looking.

Some nights, after my shift, I would sit in the hospital courtyard and think about all the faces I’d seen — patients, families, colleagues. Maybe, I thought, this was what he meant. That our lives are just a series of rides, crossing paths for a little while, leaving pieces of ourselves behind.

One evening, I pulled a small notebook from my pocket and started writing down the stories of my own patients. Not just the sad ones, but the good ones too — the baby who went home smiling, the elderly man who cracked jokes until his last breath, the teenager who beat cancer and brought us cookies a year later.

As I wrote, I felt something shift inside me — like a window opening.

Maybe I would never see the taxi driver again. But in some strange way, he had reminded me why I chose this life.

Because remembering is its own kind of medicine.