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It's January 2000 and in the middle of the night in southwestern Virginia.

Dr. Art Van Zee is driving his car as quickly as possible down a two-lane highway,

but it's a narrow and winding road, and Van Zee is on high alert looking for any signs of

deer, which are known to leap out in front of people's cars without warning. Still, Van Zee is

trying to make time. He's a local doctor here in Lee County, and he just got a call about a woman

in the intensive care unit. The patient is in her early 20s, and she was brought in after overdosing

on a prescription drug. The doctors in the ER managed to stabilize her, but the patient is going

to need continuous monitoring, so Van Zee was called in for a shift at the ICU. It's not the most

glorious work for someone with a medical degree, but for Van Zee, this was always the dream. Working

as a small town doctor, serving patients who might have been forgotten by the medical system.

This slice of southwestern Virginia is coal country, and the nearby town of St. Charles used to

be a prosperous mining community. But over the years, life here took a turn for the worse,

and the coal mines, machines, began replacing human labor. Poverty's guyrocketed, and the effects

of economic decline showed up in the healthcare system. People were leading hard lives, and they were

suffering. That's why Van Zee was so drawn to come build a life in Appalachia, and why he spent

25 years working as the director of the St. Charles Community Health Center. When he cares about,

made the work feel more like a personal mission than a job. So he's not upset he has to come to

the ICU late at night and treat a patient who overdosed. It's his job, one he loves, and he's glad to do it.

When Dr. Van Zee reaches the hospital, he hurries through the corridors to the intensive

carrying unit, and when he gets there, he sees that the ICU has only one patient, the young woman

...