Inner Sight
He almost didn’t get to speak for himself.
Before he had even been called in, there was already someone at the door.
Someone who knew, apparently, that he couldn’t hear well. Couldn’t follow a conversation. Needed to be there.
Someone who loved him, I’m sure.
But someone who had already decided what this appointment would look like —before it had begun.
We asked the family to wait.
He came in alone.
I asked him: can you hear me?
He said yes.
Can we communicate directly?
He said he was happy to.
And then he talked.
Not about his eyes —not at first.
About his life. About decades in government service. About the kinds of people you meet when you’re the one everyone wants to avoid.
About knowing resuscitation skills no one formally taught him.
About helping people who later turned around and questioned whether the help had harmed them.
He said : we must be careful about helping where we are not wanted.
He said it without bitterness.
As a stance. Not a wound.
His visual fields are severely restricted now.
He has lived with this long enough to have built an entire life around it — quietly, competently, on his own terms.
But sitting across from me, he saw things with a clarity I don’t always encounter in people with perfect vision.
About jealousy dressed as concern.
About intervention that serves the intervener.
About the quiet cost of overextending yourself for people who were never truly asking.
I told him : you have have lost your outer sight, but your inner sight sees so much, so clearly.
He smiled.
And after a moment, he said something about family — just a few words, and then a pause.
As though the rest of it wasn’t worth the breath.
I understood.
As he was leaving, I went to get his wheelchair.
He walked out himself.
As he settled into it, I instinctively reached for the footrest.
He motioned with his hand.
Gently. Clearly.
I’ll do it.
I stepped back.
He did it himself.
In that small moment, everything that had passed between us in the consultation room continued without a word.
He did not need saving.
He never did.
He simply needed someone to know when to step back.
I thought afterwards about what would have been lost if the door had opened differently.
He would have become a patient being managed, rather than a person speaking.
The conversation would have been translated. Summarised. Redirected.
His answers would have been answered for him.
Inner sight doesn’t announce itself.
It doesn’t sit in waiting rooms insisting on being included.
It just waits, quietly, for the space to be seen.
A healer I know once listened as I described what I was trying to create in my practice.
Patient-centred care. I said.
She paused.
Then replied, simply:
I find that word curious.
Why does it even need to exist?
How else should care be —if not centred around the patient?
I think about that often.
The fact that we needed to name it.
To coin it.
To build frameworks around it.
Tells us something about how far care had drifted from the person it was meants to serve.
He already knew this.
He had known it long before I did.
The consultation room belongs to the patient.
Sometimes, our only job is to make sure it stays that way.
