The biggest source of stress, Mr. Monfort said, is that his three children and wife are living on the street because the earthquake destroyed their home. His wife begs him daily to stay with them. Instead, unpaid and without a mask or gloves to wear, he walks to the sanatorium each day at 6 a.m. and stays until 8 p.m. when most of the patients drift to sleep.

“Why don’t you just leave us to die?” asked Clervil Orange, 39. Mr. Monfort looked offended by the notion. But he did not answer and the question seemed to stick with him.

The ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus, once wrote that there was a type of suffering so intense that, even in our sleep, it bores into the heart until eventually “in our own despair, against our will,” it taps into a terrible wisdom.

After several minutes in silence, Mr. Monfort spoke of that wisdom. He referred to it as a “strange hope” that had sprung from the suffering of his patients and the loss and abandonment of his fellow staff.

“These people here are dying, but they keep me alive,” he said. “I know they are hurting more than me and not complaining.

“So,” he said, handing another walk-in patient a packet of pills, “I must continue.”

[From the NY Times]