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shell-shocked. I was deeply dismayed at how badly the day hadgone. I kept thinking, What on earth made me think I could do this? I had known the extent of the problem. I knew there were thousands of homeless kids ranged across the country. It was the severity of their needs that had made me want to help them. But reality is different from numbers. Numbers are never real. These kids were real, and I felt I had barely helped any of them.
    I didn’t want to admit it, but I had thought my job would be easier. I knew it was only the first day, but I had pictured myself having the time to make meaningful connections with the kids. I really thought I would be dealing with their situation in a straightforward manner. They would step on my van homeless, I would attend to their medical needs, and somehow this would help them get off the streets. I didn’t know exactly how I had come up with this naive idea. I had just assumed that once I gave them medical care they would be happy and healthy and somehow transition into rewarding lives. It would be fulfilling, and I would feel good about myself. What I had not envisioned was being soaked in hydraulic fluid, the nurse-practitioner I respected radiating disappointment next to me, and a tsunami of doubt flooding my heart.
    I looked out the passenger window. I tried to imagine myself doing this for ten years. Ten years of kids with infected bites and dirty clothes and distrustful eyes and immunization histories that were one long question mark. Ten years of teenagers who came to me with a list of problems that unfolded in layers, problems that spanned their lives and would not be solved in one visit, or even ten visits, or maybe even ever. Ten years of dealing with intractable problems that probably went back for generations. Could I deal with that? Could I deal with the prospect of kids whom I never helped?
    We stopped by the children’s hospital. It was late. I stepped out of the van weary. Jan followed. She was dragging a huge bag filled with the dirty gowns from the day. She looked uncharacteristically bushed. “I’ll get those,” I told her. Jan gratefully relinquished the bag. My first day ended with my lugging a bag of dirty gowns into an almost empty hospital, hoping to find someone to help me getthem laundered. I had to smile at myself. I might have been the first doctor in the history of the hospital to finish his day by washing gowns.
    It was again past eleven when I got home. I wondered how long my wife would put up with this. Luckily as a doctor she was used to crazy long hours, but still. “How did it go?” Amy asked, yawning. She was fresh out of the shower and sitting at the kitchen island, an empty bowl of ice cream next to her. A medical journal was there. She had been reading it while waiting for me. I was touched she had stayed up.
    “It was hard,” I said. I kissed her. “I want to talk to my dad. I’ll be right back. Promise.” What I wanted to say was that I had had a desperately terrible day and needed to talk to my father. I knew she understood.
    I took my phone into my home office. Maybe it was because I knew what he would say. Dad believed the first responsibility of a man was always to take care of others. When Amy and I started dating, I had taken her to visit my parents, driving up to their place in Gilbert, right outside Phoenix, in her little green Volkswagen. Amy had loved the rural Arizona farmland, with its irrigated pastures and horses nuzzling patches of green grass in the sun. My dad did not love her car.
    He took one look at her tires and began reading me the riot act. “Look at those tires!” he said once we were alone in the driveway. Amy was enjoying a soda in the cool, shaded living room with my mom and sister, Stephanie, who was over for Sunday dinner with her husband, Curtis, and their two young, boisterously happy sons. “Those tires are bald,” Dad said forcefully. “They could blow any time. Do you want Amy getting a flat tire