As the eldest daughter of a doctor, I was often my father’s sidekick. That was how I learned to walk fast, to be around people from many different backgrounds, to become comfortable in hospitals. From the age of thirteen to sixteen, I worked summers in my father’s general practice office in Hollywood, Florida, at a time when an office visit was $7.50, an extended one $15. I worked my way up from pulling charts, to greeting patients at the front desk, to escorting them to treatment rooms, to serving as my father’s assistant, eventually learning how to do urine dips, centrifuge blood, take and process x-rays, and on occasion assist with minor surgeries.

The days went like this: morning office hours from nine to noon. Lunch at home or a Chinese restaurant. A nap for my father. Housecalls in the afternoon. Evening office hours from six to eight, or whenever we got finished, many nights after nine. Hospital visits after that. I was a frequent tag-along on the house and hospital visits.

A good number of his patients were on Medicare. I loved visiting these couples and elderly sisters, seeing the insides of their little Florida apartments, listening to their stories. Dad often made friends with his patients, so despite illness, these visits were often filled with laughter.

One couple stands out: Pete and Mabel. Mabel, in her mid-eighties, was a heavy, round woman with a hearty laugh. Pete, ten to fifteen years younger, was thin, with twinkling eyes behind thick glasses. They’d found each other late in life and were deliriously in love, always affectionate and poking fun at each other. My father loved to joke about how they loved to joke about their active sex life. Their laughter brightened the waiting room when they’d come in for their check-ups, which they did more and more frequently over the summers I worked in Dad’s office.

And that is how I found myself accompanying my father to Pete and Mabel’s apartment one summer day.

Pete stayed in the small kitchen while my father checked on Mabel in the bedroom. Mabel had been sick for some time. She lay in a hospital bed, her body swollen like an overstuffed sausage, breath shallow, acknowledging our presence with barely visible nods of her head. I watched from the bedroom doorway as my father listened to her heart with his stethoscope, felt her pulse, checked the edema in her ankles, his fingers leaving a deep mark where he pressed. All of this done slowly, tenderly, and in silence.

After he had examined her, my father put his stethoscope back into the tackle box that served as his doctor’s bag, and we walked to the kitchen where Pete was waiting. Dad sat down at the yellow Formica table in the chair nearest Pete, and rested his chin on his folded hands, his index fingers forming a steeple that touched his nose. I joined them at the far end of the table.

After a few moments, Pete broke the silence. “How’s she doing, Doc?”

My father’s steepled fingers folded to join the rest of his hands beneath his chin.

“She’s dying, Pete.”

“Oh.” Pete’s lips trembled. His eyes blinked behind his thick glasses.

“I don’t know exactly when, Pete. It could be tonight, it could be tomorrow, it could be a couple of days. But it will be soon. “

Silence again. Even as a child, I knew this was a holy moment. Two men acknowledging the presence of impending death. There were few visible signs of emotion in the room. Just my father’s chin resting on his beautiful doctor hands. And Pete, breathing and blinking as he began to absorb the looming loss of the love of his life.

A brief conversation followed on what to do next: how to keep Mabel comfortable, how to get in touch with my father. Small talk around the big talk that had just occurred. My father and I said goodbye to Pete and Mabel, walked to the car, and drove to the office in silence.

Fifty years later, I still remember the power of that exchange, its utter simplicity and honesty. What didn’t register with the kid in the room, that I realize only now as I work through this memory, was that Mabel was going to die at home, with Pete by her side, in the tiny apartment where they had shared their life.