The airline terminal is not particularly crowded. Passengers occupy themselves with books and laptops. A television blares in one corner, some sort of sitcom, ignored by most; only two people seem transfixed by the worn jokes and canned laugh track. Occasionally the terminal doors slide open, bringing a cool drift of a breeze and the scent of diesel exhaust, and a new cadre of people will straggle in, looking in bewilderment or assurance to doors leading to planes which will bear them away–to homes, to motels, to yet another airport.

Erin Morgan glanced up from her paperback as the latest contingent came into the terminal. It was a commuter terminal, set well away from the busy, massive wing of San Francisco International Airport, reached by the buses that ran unceasingly from building to building. What a thankless, boring job that must be, driving one of those buses. But perhaps, to the drivers, a stable job and regular paycheck outweighed monotony?

She looked casually at the latest arrivals, noting skin color and gait patterns, the yellowed skin and stick-thin limbs of one elderly woman. Advanced liver disease, or perhaps cancer. After fifteen years, the habit of physical assessment was automatic. She remembered the last graduate nurse she had precepted; how he marveled at her ability to glance at a patient and see the imminent crisis of lung or heart. Erin had smiled at the compliment.

“In time, you’ll be able to do the same thing,” she told him. “It’s not a miracle, just a skill like any other.”

The real miracle, she knew by now, was that the expensive medicines and the complicated machines didn’t really have much to do with people getting well. No matter how corny it sounded, it was a matter of the heart. Sometimes, just by being there, by giving of yourself, sometimes you could help another person heal.

Now this man, just coming through the door, was short of breath and with the thickened, wrinkled skin of a confirmed smoker. Yes, there was the bulge of the packet in his pocket, and behind him—her eyes fixed on the next man.

Tall and rangy, the clean stride of an athlete, with tanned skin and thick silver hair. Premature, she decided, noting the skin on the back of the neck; it was still smooth, rather than the furrowed, thicker epidermis of an older man. Not much, if anything, wrong with his health, unless it was one of the silent diseases like high blood pressure.