The help he gave at the end was different.

It was not more important than saving a life; nothing is.

But it was help given face to face, hand in hand, in the full light of another person’s fear, and it required something the operating room never had, which was for Marcus to be present, and vulnerable, and available to be moved.

He had spent a career fixing bodies from a professional distance.

He spent the end of it comforting souls up close, and in learning to do the second thing, he became, I think, not a lesser man than the surgeon he had been, but a larger one.