The one whose HIV-positive status was fortuitously discovered.

A consultation room, i don't remember which one. Sixth year.

The next patient is about to enter.
I bend to read her file so that I will know her better before she takes place in front of the desk. The physician who is my tutor let me do it, clicking on his computer.

Then, I read it. On top, among the antecedents.
This infectious diseases specialist's sentence : "We do recall that this is a patient of X years whose HIV-positive status was discovered fortuitously".
I frown and turn tawards the physician when she enters.

Thirty-something, comely, a round and smiling face. She sits to discuss about the topic of the consultation, which as nothing to do with her random serologies.
I try to picture her later, when things might not be as steady as they seemed to be.
The consultation is over, she leaves.
I have absolutely no idea of what they talked about.
I was obsessed over and over again with those two words "fortuitously discovered".
How is that even possible ? How can someone turn a sentence like that ?

I sometimes meet one of my friend in the street fortuitously. Sometimes, i decide fortuitously what i am going to have for dinner.
Casually. By chance.

And however much I think about this sentence over and over again, if one day my physician happens to announce me that he has fortuitously find out something about me like HIV, hepatitis C, syphilis or, I don't know, pregnancy, well, I am not exactly sure about what might fortuitously cross his desk right in his face.

I know that I absolutely don't know this woman, who she is, what she thinks or what she feels about her sickness. And I am usually one of those who likes to ease things off.
But this very sentence shocked me. And I think that, no matter what I do, i will always find it highly disturbing.So, until I figure it out, be careful about what could, fortuitously of course, happen to you after you've read that note.

The one whose life was saved by a mushroom.

Summer in the Visceral Surgery Service. Operating room.

I attend a diverticulitis surgery. It is a complicated inflammation of a part of the intestine which is called the colon.

A patient is there, lying down somewhere under the surgical drape.
I've never met him because he came in by the ER. I will never see his face because he won't be in my area of the service.
As usual, i am holding the operating tools to remove the tissues and the little device to draw of the body fluids. I am quite good at it actually, drawing of. It is tidy, it is meticulous and it doesn't need you to overthink at all. The main difficulty being the task of keeping the operating field clear for the surgeon and the resident, i think i can handle that without any overwhelming difficulties.

This patient is kind of a riddle.
The CT scan tells us that he is suffering from a perforation of the digestive tract leading to a start of peritonitis, an inflammation spreading in the abdomen, but the clinical aspect of this man is actually quite good.
Several minutes and a incision running from the sternum to the ombilic later, here we are, in front of the trouble-making gut.
"- Er, it's..."
"- Do you believe... It seems... I think..."
"- Nurse, take my iphone !"

The beaming surgeon smiles at me over his procedure mask. He cuts the gut and put it on the operating field so that we can examine it.
There, forming what is litteraly called in french a "perforated-then-patched-diverticulitis", is a... Mushroom.
A real one, a button mushroom, full piece, with its stem and its little cap. Cutted in half in the lenght side, it blocks the hole, preventing the intestinal content from pouring itself where it shouldn't.

I don't look at the mushrooms the same way anymore.
First, because i know the fungus' secret : the fact that we can't process them at all.
And secondly because they remind me the fact that, sometimes, you just need to be the right one in the right place to make the difference, no matter what brought you there.