The doctor gave her a stern glance. “Well, miss, if you want to be admitted, you need to pay. But after seeing your condition, I don’t think you can afford the treatment here!”
“But doctor, please…”
Before Anna could complete her sentence, the doctor cut her off. “Can you please stop shouting! I don’t care whether you die in pain! Remember, no money, no treatment. And if you continue acting like this, I will kick you out of here!”
Anna was about to give birth on the doorstep. She thought of requesting the doctor once again, but before she could say anything, he slammed the clinic door in her face and went inside.
Dejected, Anna decided to go to another hospital. However, the pain was so intense that she couldn’t move a bit. So she just sat there, gripping her stomach and looking for someone to assist her.
Luckily, a kind doctor came out of the clinic and offered her help. “Please come with me, ma’am,” he told Anna as he approached her. “I’ll save your child no matter what!” With that, the doctor escorted her inside, set up a separate ward for her, and ensured that Anna’s delivery went smoothly.
Not long after, Anna delivered a baby boy, but the baby was premature and had to be placed in the NICU immediately.
Poor Anna was so exhausted after the delivery that she didn’t wake up until the next morning when she discovered the obnoxious doctor by her side. “What the hell? Since when did this clinic start admitting beggars like you?!” He looked at her angrily.
“Anyway, It’s not too late to clean the mess. So get up and get out of the hospital!” he added and started “escorting” Anna out of the hospital.
Luckily, at that moment, the kind doctor, Dr. Paul Warner, came in. “Dr. Morgan, what are you doing? She gave birth yesterday, and she’s still weak!” he retorted.
Dr. Morgan gave a fierce glance to Dr. Warner. “Stay out of this, Paul! I’m your senior, and I know what’s best for the clinic. We can’t admit her without the fees! That’s a rule!”
“If that’s the case, I’ll pay her fees,” Dr. Warner said firmly. “But I’m not letting her leave until she and her baby recover completely!”
Dr. Morgan burst out laughing. “You’re such a knucklehead, Paul. I don’t think your bank account will allow it!”
“You don’t need to worry about that doctor,” Dr. Warner continued. “I will pay the bills by tomorrow morning. Mark my words!”
“Alright! But if you’re not able to pay the fees, I’ll kick her out,” Dr. Morgan almost yelled and walked away.
The next day, Anna was on her way to the washroom when she met Dr. Morgan again. “I checked with the accounts department, and the payment hasn’t been made. So pack your bags and get out of this place ASAP!” he ordered her.
“Doctor, just give me until the afternoon. My husband is on his way, and he’ll take care of everything,” Anna assured him.
Dr. Morgan sighed and rolled his eyes. “Do you really want me to believe that? Aren’t you just making up excuses so that you can stay here?”
“Well, doctor, if I’m making excuses, you can throw me out of here in the afternoon!” Anna said firmly and walked away.
To Dr. Morgans’ surprise, Anna’s husband actually showed up at the clinic that afternoon. But when Dr. Morgan saw him, he couldn’t believe his eyes!
“Mr. Carter, you?” he inquired, surprised.
“Yes, David. It’s me. My wife told me everything, and I can’t believe you treated a pregnant woman like that!”
It turned out that Anna was going to give birth in Germany, but her labor began early while her husband was away on a business trip. Anna considered approaching this luxury clinic for assistance because her husband was the primary sponsor there.
Since the pain was severe, she didn’t waste time changing her clothes and went there in her nightgown, forgetting her phone in the process. Dr. Warner kindly offered her his phone, allowing her to contact her husband.
When Dr. Morgan saw her outside the hospital, he mistook her for a poor woman and threatened to kick her out. But now that Dr. Morgan knew Anna wasn’t any random woman asking for help, he realized he had invited huge trouble for himself.
“I had no idea she was your wife, Sir,” Dr. Morgan said quietly. “I apologize for the mistreatment. ”
“How does it matter, David?” Mr. Carter almost yelled at him. “How can you behave like that with any pregnant woman!”
“Well, Sir. I won’t…”
Before Dr. Morgan could finish, Mr. Carter cut him off. “No, David. Nothing can explain what you did. And you should be punished for it. Therefore, I’m firing you! I hope this way you’ll learn your lesson.”
“But Sir, then the maternity ward won’t have a head doctor. Moreover, there aren’t many senior doctors here, and it may take the clinic some time to find one!” Dr. Morgan expressed his thoughts. “So, at the very least, let me stay here till then!”
Mr. Carter smiled at him. “You don’t need to worry about that, doctor! I have appointed someone as the head already,” he said and called Dr. Warner inside. “Let me introduce you to Dr. Warner, the new head.”
Dr. Morgan was shocked. “But Sir, he’s still young, and he’s inexperienced!”
“Well, he deserves to be a doctor and the head, considering how he decided to aid a pregnant woman without considering her status or whether she would have money!”
Dr. Morgan didn’t utter a word. He stood silently with his head bowed down.
Mr. Carter continued. “I don’t think you qualify as a doctor, David. A doctor would always try their best to save a patient! So, please leave and don’t come back here ever again!”
Dr. Morgan walked out of the clinic, embarrassed by what he’d done.
What can we learn from this story?
Don’t judge a book by its cover.
Learn to be humble and kind like Dr. Warner.
Good people always get goodness in return.
Share this story with your friends. It might brighten their day and inspire them.
Actress Anne Heche Dead at 53 After High-Speed Car Crash
Anne Heche has died of a brain injury and severe burns after speeding and crashing her car into a home in the residential Mar Vista neighborhood last Friday, Aug 5. The building erupted in flames and Heche was dragged out of the vehicle and rushed to the Grossman Burn Center at West Hills Hospital in Los Angeles.
The 53-year-old, Emmy Award-winning actress is best known for her roles in 1990s films like Volcano, the Gus Van Sant remake of Psycho, Donnie Brasco and Six Days, Seven Nights.
Holly Baird, a spokesperson for Heche’s family, sent NPR a statement Friday afternoon saying: “While Anne is legally dead according to California law, her heart is still beating, and she has not been taken off life support.”
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Baird added an organ procurement company is working to see if the actress is a match for organ donation, and that determination could be made as early as Saturday or as late as next Tuesday.
Heche launched her career playing a pair of good and evil twins on the long-running daytime soap opera Another World, for which she earned a Daytime Emmy Award in 1991.
In the 2000s, Heche focused on making independent movies and TV series. She acted with Nicole Kidman and Cameron Bright in the drama Birth; with Jessica Lange and Christina Ricci in the film adaptation of Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel’s bestselling book about depression; and in the comedy Cedar Rapids alongside John C. Reilly and Ed Helms. She also starred in the ABC drama series Men in Trees.
Heche made guest appearances on TV shows like Nip/Tuck and Ally McBeal and starred in a couple of Broadway productions, garnering a Tony Award nomination for her performance in the remount of the 1932 comedy Twentieth Century.
In 2020, Heche launched a weekly lifestyle podcast, Better Together, with friend and co-host Heather Duffy and appeared on Dancing with the Stars.
Heche became a lesbian icon as a result of her highly-visible relationship with comedian and TV host Ellen DeGeneres in the late 1990s.
Heche and DeGeneres were arguably the most famous openly gay couple in Hollywood at a time when being out was far less acceptable than it is today. Heche later claimed the romance took a toll on her career. “I was in a relationship with Ellen DeGeneres for three-and-a-half years and the stigma attached to that relationship was so bad that I was fired from my multimillion-dollar picture deal and I did not work in a studio picture for 10 years,” Heche said in an episode of Dancing with the Stars.
But the relationship paved the way for broader acceptance of single-sex partnerships.
“With so few role models and representations of lesbians in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Anne Heche’s relationship with Ellen DeGeneres contributed to her celebrity in a significant way and their relationship ultimately validated lesbian love for both straight and queer people,” said the Los Angeles-based New York Times columnist Trish Bendix.
Bendix said that while Heche was later in relationships with men — she married Coleman Laffoon in the early 2000s and they had a son together, and was more recently in a relationship with Canadian actor James Tupper with whom she also had a son — “her influence on lesbian and bisexual visibility can’t and shouldn’t be erased.”
In 2000, Fresh Air host Terry Gross interviewed Heche in advance of her directorial debut on the final episode of If These Walls Could Talk 2, a series of three HBO television films exploring the lives of lesbian couples starring DeGeneres and Sharon Stone. In the interview, Heche said she wished she had been more sensitive about other people’s coming out experiences when she and DeGeneres went public with their relationship.
“What I wish I would have known is more of the journey and the struggle of individuals in the gay community or couples in the gay community,” Heche said. “Because I would have couched my enthusiasm with an understanding that this isn’t everybody’s story.”
Heche was born in Aurora, Ohio in 1969, the youngest of five siblings. She was raised in a Christian fundamentalist household.
She had a challenging childhood. The family moved around a lot. She said she believed her father, Donald, was a closeted gay man; he died in 1983 of HIV.
“He just couldn’t seem to settle down into a normal job, which, of course, we found out later, and as I understand it now, was because he had another life,” Heche told Gross on Fresh Air. “He wanted to be with men.”
A few months after her father died, Heche’s brother Nathan was killed in a car crash at the age of 18.
In her 2001 Memoir Call Me Crazy, and in subsequent interviews, Heche said her father abused her sexually as a child, triggering mental health issues which the actress said she carried with her for decades as an adult.
In an interview with the actress for Larry King Live, host Larry King called Heche’s book, “one of the most honest, outspoken, extraordinary autobiographies ever written by anyone in show business.”
“I am left with a deep, wordless sadness,” wrote Heche’s son with Lafoon, Homer, in a statement shared with NPR via Baird. “Hopefully my mom is free from pain and beginning to explore what I like to imagine as her eternal freedom.”
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