"You learn it when you become a doctor. Not in school--that isn't where you learn, in any case--but when you lay your hands on people and presume to heal them. There are so many there, beyond your reach. So many you can never touch, so many whose essence you can't find, so many who slip through your fingers. But you can't think about them. The only thing you can do--the only thing--is to try for the one who's in front of you. Act as though this one patient is the only person in the world--because to do otherwise is to lose that one, too. One at a time, that's all you can do. And you learn not to despair over all the ones you can't help, but only to do what you can." She"