Three Dolls

This reflection is published at part of the Sunday Close on BokaMD.substack.com.

The other night I read my kids a Persian story at bedtime. The house had finally gone quiet in that fragile way evenings do when everyone is tired enough to listen. PJs on, lights low, the book open between us. 

I laterlearned the story has a close parallel in India too. Different names, same bones. Stories that travel like that usually do so because they carry something human and real.

In the story, a queen brings out three dolls that look identical and asks her court a riddle. Which one is wise. Which one is foolish. Which one is dangerous. 

Her advisors inspect and cannot solve the riddle. 

None of them can answer her.

Eventually a traveling storyteller steps forward. He says very little. He plucks a single strand of the queen’s hair and feeds it into the ear of the first doll. The hair enters one ear and slips right out the other. This one hears, he says, but nothing stays.

He feeds the hair into the ear of the second doll. It goes in and comes out the mouth. This one hears, he says, and speaks quickly. 

Then he threads the hair into the ear of the third doll. It disappears. This one listens, he says. She holds what she receives. 

And then the line that stayed with me after I closed the book. That makes her the wisest, or the most dangerous, depending on what she does with what she holds.

When I finished reading, my son did not say anything. I did not explain it to him.

Alarms, numbers, protocols, rapid decisions exist in the ICU. You are rewarded for speed and clarity. Stillness can feel like hesitation. Silence can feel like failure. 

Most days, without meaning to, I become the first doll. Information passes through me. Or the second. Information comes in and leaves quickly, shaped into plans and explanations and reassurances.

But the moments that matter most in critical care rarely announce themselves. A nurse says, something feels off, before the vitals agree. A patient’s labs are improving, but their eyes feel farther away than yesterday. A family member asks the same question again, not because they did not hear you, but because their nervous system probably cannot yet absorb what is happening. 

These moments do not need speed. They need containment.

That is where the third doll lives. Listening that holds. Listening that lets something enter you and stay for a moment without rushing it back out into the room. 

I have learned that gratitude quietly lives here too. Not in the dramatic saves or the inevitable endings, but in the privilege of sitting with a stranger’s fear without trying to tidy it up too quickly.

Some weeks, the only honest win is that you did not let something important pass through you untouched. You stayed. You held it. 

Tonight, I am grateful for those unmeasured moments. The ones that did not trend on a monitor but still changed the room. 

And for a children’s story that reminded me what kind of clinician I am still trying to be when the unit is loud and the week is heavy. Present enough to listen. Steady enough to hold what I hear.

—

Notes from Boka. Have a present week.