“Biff” Mitchell at 6 foot four and 265 ponds is all muscle. He is a firefighter/EMT who drives the ambulance and regularly enters burning buildings to save lives. He teaches students at a nearby military college how to fight fires, and on the side, he repairs heavy equipment and also acts as our town’s Animal Control Officer.
I saw “Biff” this morning for an impromptu visit because of a finger laceration. I was curious, and asked what heroic act he had been performing when he cut himself.
He grinned, and answered: “I was making a chocolate cream pie for Thanksgiving.” He looked a bit uncomfortable, and added: “I haven’t told Debbie yet that I cut my hand on the broken pieces of her favorite glass bowl.”
“Biff” had rinsed out the cut thoroughly, and he was already up to date on his tetanus shots. I did a digital block with buffered lidocaine and stitched him up, dressed the wound and sent him home with my best wishes for dealing with the loss of his wife’s favorite bowl and “Happy Thanksgiving”.
Around four o’clock today a chocolate cream pie appeared at Autumn’s desk. It was from “Biff”, and I invited everyone to have a taste. Everybody politely declined, so I brought an intact pie home for our Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.
I thought this was such a quaint little incident that after dinner I started to write it down, thinking it might make a post for my blog. I was interrupted by the telephone. The caller ID informed me that it was a local number belonging to “B. Mitchell”.
“Was there any left of that pie for you to taste?” he asked.
“The nurses left it all for me”, I told him. “It’ll be the crowning jewel at our Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow”.
I could almost see him beaming at the other end of the receiver.
He seemed more proud of this pie and more grateful for my squeezing him in the day before Thanksgiving than anything more glamorous either one of us has done all year.
A Country Doctor Writes: 
Lovely story!
My son, Robin, is currently working on something for heroes like “Biff”. He’s designing a web application to help emergency services make better decisions.
‘Decisions for Heroes’ is a collaborative rescue team management tool to record and analyse rescue operations.
http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/
Ultimately, it will help people just like “Biff”, to save lives.
Happy Thanksgiving Day!
There is something about the small heartfelt gifts such as this pie that makes the job so satisfying. Whenever I’m able to bring home a jar of homemade jam, fresh baked cookies, or smoked salmon I find myself waiving it in front of my family as a badge of honor that someone appreciates the care I provide. I often wonder if specialists like urologists or gastroenterologists are blessed with such gifts.