Though I have treated thousands of patients since, Nov. 6, 2022 — the day of a record hot New York City Marathon — still weighs on me. Around the three-and-a-half-hour mark of the race, the finish-line medical tent filled. Inside, I was volunteering as a medical provider and an amateur runner, assigned to a row of cots in the moderate-severity zone. The unseasonably climbing temperatures were taking a visible toll on athletes of all levels.
A volunteer wheeled into my zone a middle-aged man — I’ll call him John — who had collapsed at the finish line. I asked him his name; he answered without hesitation.