The next day, I knocked on the door of Room 412 armed with a bottle of baby blue nail polish. Not an elixir, but an oath—to face the unknown together, to sit with the uncomfortable silence, and to meet her in the middle, wherever that may be.

Meher Kalkat reflects on accepting the messiness of life and the not having all the answers.

The essay read in this episode was published in the Teaching and Learning Moments column in the August 2023 issue of Academic Medicine. Read the essay at academicmedicine.org.