His turban was magnificent, a rich bluish purple. He came into my wife’s room and introduced himself.

“I am a neurologist,” he said, “and I would be happy to treat your wife, if it weren’t for the pregnancy.”

She had just recovered from a seizure less than an hour before. She had the worst headache anyone could ever imagine. She was nauseated and her vision and hearing were impaired. We didn’t fully know what was wrong yet, but something clearly was.

And our second child was at risk. Her pregnancy was only 33 weeks along, but the seizures were a threat to the growing baby.

I’d rushed to the hospital, seen the seizure, knew it was a complicated situation. Neurology was not something I had anticipated needing. Someone had to make a decision, and had to make it fast.

“It’s just that…since you are pregnant…I think it would be better to transfer to you a facility with more experience,” he said. I wasn’t sure how to feel in the moment. His warmth and composure was reassuring; his recommendation that she be moved made logical sense but was unsettling.

My wife said “My head is killing me; if you are going to make a decision, make it quick.”

It was done then. The neonatal team would perform an emergency C-section. My wife, still sedated, would be flown by med-evac helicopter to Baltimore, a city I knew almost nothing about.

The ICU doctor–also Indian–would give me a warm hug and tell me it would be alright in the end. And I got in the car with a friend and drove into the night.

He was right, the ICU physician. Things are alright, 16 years later.

But I never saw the neurologist with the turban again.