About this Chat

We’ll discuss Anton Chekhov’s short story “Enemies,” in which a physician loses his young son to diphtheria and in the following hours is forced to make wrenching decisions as a father, husband, and professional. We are honored to be joined by special guest Dr. Suzanne Koven (@SuzanneKovenMD), a primary care physician and Writer in Residence at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

This chat was curated by Dr Becca Omlor (@BeccaOm15), a palliative care and geriatrics physician at Wake Forest Baptist Health and member of MedHumChat’s core team. At Wake Forest School of Medicine, Dr. Omlor leads the narrative medicine curriculum for the geriatric and palliative care fellowships and is co-director of the Medicine and Patients in Society course for medical students.

Antov Chekov (1840—1940) was a Russian playwright and master of the short story. He was also as a physician, and many of his works explore encounters with medicine and illness.

Selected Excerpts

“That repellent horror which is thought of when we speak of death was absent from the room. In the numbness of everything, in the mother's attitude, in the indifference on the doctor's face there was something that attracted and touched the heart, that subtle, almost elusive beauty of human sorrow which men will not for a long time learn to understand and describe, and which it seems only music can convey. There was a feeling of beauty, too, in the austere stillness. Kirilov and his wife were silent and not weeping, as though besides the bitterness of their loss they were conscious, too, of all the tragedy of their position; just as once their youth had passed away, so now together with this boy their right to have children had gone for ever to all eternity! The doctor was forty-four, his hair was grey and he looked like an old man; his faded and invalid wife was thirty-five. Andrey was not merely the only child, but also the last child.

In contrast to his wife the doctor belonged to the class of people who at times of spiritual suffering feel a craving for movement.”

"You are in sorrow, I understand. But I'm not asking you to a case of toothache, or to a consultation, but to save a human life!" he went on entreating like a beggar. "Life comes before any personal sorrow! Come, I ask for courage, for heroism! For the love of humanity!"

...

"It's an agonizing state! One never loves those who are near one so much as when one is in danger of losing them."

And when the carriage slowly drove over the river, Kirilov started all at once as though the splash of the water had frightened him, and made a movement.

"Listen -- let me go," he said miserably. "I'll come to you later. I must just send my assistant to my wife. She is alone, you know!"

“With tears in his eyes, trembling all over, Abogin opened his heart to the doctor with perfect sincerity...If he had talked in this way for an hour or two, and opened his heart, he would undoubtedly have felt better. Who knows, if the doctor had listened to him and had sympathized with him like a friend, he might perhaps, as often happens, have reconciled himself to his trouble without protest, without doing anything needless and absurd. . . . 

Abogin and the doctor stood face to face, and in their wrath continued flinging undeserved insults at each other. I believe that never in their lives, even in delirium, had they uttered so much that was unjust, cruel, and absurd. The egoism of the unhappy was conspicuous in both. The unhappy are egoistic, spiteful, unjust, cruel, and less capable of understanding each other than fools. Unhappiness does not bring people together but draws them apart, and even where one would fancy people should be united by the similarity of their sorrow, far more injustice and cruelty is generated than in comparatively placid surroundings.”