At some time or another we will all require the services of a good doctor, either our own G.P. or in more serious cases we may finish up in hospital under the care of a Consultant specialising in our particular illness. These professionals do a very good job, but are not all as selfless as the doctor in this week’s story.

In the 1970’s in a small town in America there lived a Doctor Simpson. Unlike our own health service, in America you are expected to pay for all your medical treatment. The good doctor was known locally as the “poor man’s” friend, because he spent hours at the bedside of unfortunate people and never ever took a fee from them. Unlike his colleagues in the medical
profession he didn’t drive a nice car and have an expensively equipped surgery, he lived and worked in two upstairs rooms situated over a grocery store. At the foot of the stairs leading up to his accommodation and office there was a sign reading: Doc Simpson – Office Upstairs.

He was so busy looking after the townspeople that he had no time for a social life himself and even lost his girlfriend, whom he had hoped to marry one day. She turned him down flat when he proposed to her saying that he spent more time with the sick than he ever did with her and that wasn’t the life for her. The good doctor spent a life of selfless dedication to any and every person who needed him and when he died, his funeral was the largest ever seen in that town.

At a meeting held sometime later, the townspeople tried to decide what kind of monument they should erect to the memory of their beloved doctor, but they found it difficult to reach an agreement and adjourned the meeting until a later date to give people time to come up with ideas. A couple, who had been especially helped by the doctor when their child was ill, were on their way home from the meeting when a thought struck them. They removed the doctor’s sign from the door and the next day it appeared over his grave. It read: "Doc Simpson – Office upstairs."