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 is the kind stranger who helped me get to my grandma.

This woman, I'm sure, would not begin to remember us if she's still around.

This is my story about my unsung hero.

Thank you very much for changing my life.

This week's story comes from Jamil Zaki.

So I don't actually know the name of my unsung hero, but I'll remember him for the rest of my life.

When our older daughter Alma was born about five and a half years ago, she was perfect to us, but she was also struggling to live. We learned later that she had had a stroke during her birth.

We were in a place of utter helplessness and we're also thousands of miles away from most of our family.

And so we relied on the staff there.

There's one interaction I won't ever forget.

So we had learned that Alma had a stroke

and that she would need to have this really painful type of injection

that we would have to give her twice a day for the foreseeable future and I was just

in despair.

It was about one in the morning when we found this out,

and the doctor who told me this clearly was exhausted himself.

I mean, it's one in the morning and he's at work and he could just see what was happening with me and instead of just delivering the news compassionately and leaving he just pulled up a chair. It was just me and

pulled up a chair. It was just me and him and we talked, I'd say for about 90 minutes or so,

and it wasn't just about Alma and her diagnosis and her condition, he told me about his kids and the struggles that he had had with them and

Give me some advice on fatherhood and it was just this weirdly normal interaction.

...