In the British writer-physician A.J. Cronin’s autobiography, he describes being a doctor in the North of England when there was an outbreak of diphtheria. A little boy was brought in hardly able to breathe. As the Irish would say, “he had the dip,” and in those days that often meant the patient would die. The doctor performed a tracheotomy which allowed the child to breathe, and put him in the care of a young nurse who would watch him through the night hours. The doctor went off to bed.
In the small hours of the morning, a trembling nurse wakened him with the sad news that the little boy was dead. Exhausted herself, the nurse had slipped into sleep only to awaken and discover that the tube was blocked and the child dead. The physician was furious. He raged against the girl. He told her he would see to it that she would never nurse again. She stood before his wrath pitifully small, devastated by what had happened, and in a pathetic voice scarcely audible said, “Give me another chance.” He told her he would not, and having dismissed her, went back to bed.
Back in bed, but not to sleep. Her poor face haunted him, and so did her words, “Give me another chance.” And the next morning, when he got up, he tore up the letter of condemnation he had written during the night.
Years later, Cronin tells us, he met the young girl, now grown to womanhood, the matron of one of the largest children’s hospitals in England and known throughout the country for her commitment to her calling and her nursing skills. Acquittal had granted her “another chance.”