The Price You Pay

You make up your mind, 

You choose the chance you take. 

You ride to where the highway ends 

And the desert breaks. 

Out on to an open road

You ride until the day.

You learn to sleep at night

With the price you pay. 

-Bruce Springsteen

Until about ten days ago, had you asked me to stake my life to my ability to correctly identify the starting right guard for the Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs, Margaret would be firing up the incinerator as I type (although it occurs to me that regardless of my answer to that question, she might very well always have it cranked up and ready to go). 

I only learned the name Laurent Duvernay-Tardif when he announced that he is opting out of the 2020 NFL season.  He is from Montreal. He is a medical school graduate who, given the time demands of his full-time job and his inability to work in a residency, has not yet attained his medical license. It has not stopped him for helping others. He has spent the past several months, as an orderly, working in a long-term care facility in Montreal, helping care for COVID-19 patients. 

Last week he announced that he is not playing football this year.  He has "opted out" so that he can remain in Montreal, working as an orderly, on the front lines of the fight against this pandemic. In a statement he posted on Twitter, he explained his decision: 

Being at the front-line during this off-season has given me

a different perspective on this pandemic and the stress it 

puts on individuals and our health care system.  I cannot allow

myself to potentially transmit the virus in our communities 

simply to play the sport that I love.  If I am to take risks, 

I shall do it caring for patients. 

By opting out, he forgoes the $2.6 Million he was scheduled to make. He shall, instead, be paid $150,000 as a salary advance.  He goes off to serve his community with the support and love of his head coach, Andy Reid, his teammates, and the Chiefs. 

I was equally unfamiliar with the name Joseph J. Costa, M.D. until I read his obituary on-line yesterday morning.  Dr. Costa, fifty-six years young, ran the critical care division at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland.  While working tirelessly to treat COVID-19 patients, he contracted the disease himself.  This past Saturday morning, it killed him. 

Dr. Costa's husband, David Hart, told reporters that he had begged Dr. Costa, himself afflicted with a rare autoimmune disorder, to stay home in order to protect himself but that Dr. Costa, a hero to the men and women with whom he worked, simply could not.  

Mr. Hart said that Dr. Costa told him that he had to lead by example. He had to be willing to place himself in harm's way if he was going to direct those who worked for him to do the same. He could not ask others to risk that which he was unwilling to risk.  

Two extraordinary human beings, Joseph J. Costa, M.D. and Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, to each of whom the meaning of "the price you pay" was self-evident.  The world would be better off if the rest of us had at least a modicum of their comprehension... 

Now they'd come so far

And they'd waited so long.

Just to end up caught in a dream

Where everything goes wrong.

Where the dark of night

Holds back the light of day.

And you've gotta stand and fight

For the price you pay.

-Bruce Springsteen  

-AK