From Hidden Brain Media, I'm Shankar Vedantam.

This is My Unsung Hero, stories where one person reached out to help another in a time of need.

My Unsung Hero story is from a doctor I heard over 30 years ago.

He was a son-sung hero because he rarely got any recognition for his huge heart and his unselfish actions.

You mean the world to me and I can't thank you enough.

Today's story comes from Alec Herman.

In 2019, Alex's father was in a coma.

He was on life support in the hospital.

Alec would spend every night by his father's side.

A nurse named Ray started coming by to check on them.

Ray just had this very human warmth. He looked at me in the eyes when he talked to me.

He asked me questions about my dad.

He asked me what he was like, what his interests were.

And he was somebody to talk to.

And eventually it became clear that my father had suffered full three-year-old brain death,

and I made the difficult decision to take him off life support.

My father was a organ donor, and there is this entire surgery theater set up,

and nurses and surgeons waiting to harvest my father's tissues and organs.

So it's the most surreal thing in the world because you're holding your loved one's hand

and I'm watching them remove his intubation and his IV and I watch him flatline and die.

You're surrounded by people, but they are all completely anonymous because they're wearing

like masks and all of this protective equipment.

...