'Hope’ by Dr Kushboo Sheth is a profound and moving depiction of the inner life of a rheumatologist confronting the COVID-19 viral pandemic. The feelings that Sheth describes are as varied as they are powerful and range from fear to rage to distress. Burdened by the weight of these feelings, she vows to adapt, persevere and trudge onward. Most of all, she strives to get beyond the pandemic, aspiring to be a better person whatever battering and damage may come along the way. The feelings that Sheth describes are inescapable at this time given the upheaval that the pandemic has caused in all aspects of life. Vulnerability is universal. Anyone can infect me and I can infect anyone. Those who can infect and be infected are the same: families, friends, patients, the checkout clerk at the grocery, a random passerby walking too close to you on the sidewalk. In this calculus, infection is a matter of bad luck or, to use a word that has fallen out of fashion, fate. Even if infection does not lead to hospitalisation, it can lead to confinement at home, an isolation tantamount to imprisonment. What I find striking about ‘Hope’ is not the range and depth of Sheth’s feelings but rather the identity of the person who is experiencing them. Sheth is a physician. Physicians by training should be accustomed …