The Murmur in Room 4B

In her third week of clinical rotations at Johns Hopkins, medical student Priya Anand pressed her stethoscope to an elderly patient's chest and heard something she couldn't quite name. A faint whooshing between heartbeats. She noted "heart sounds normal" on her chart and moved on.

The next morning, attending physician Dr. Margaret Chen reviewed the chart, then handed Priya the stethoscope. "Listen again," she said. "Right there, between the lub and the dub. Hear it?"

Priya listened. The same faint whoosh.

"That's a mitral valve murmur," Dr. Chen said quietly. "It's been there every time you listened. You just didn't know what you were hearing."

Priya had heard the sound three times and documented nothing. Not because she wasn't paying attention, but because she didn't yet have the framework to recognize what the sound meant. She needed someone further along to say, "That thing you're hearing — it matters. Pay attention."

Young Samuel heard his name called three times in the darkness of the temple and ran to Eli each time. He wasn't deaf to God's voice — he simply didn't recognize it yet. It took an aging priest to say, "The next time you hear it, answer." Sometimes the Almighty speaks clearly, and the only thing missing is someone to help us name the voice. The call was already there. Samuel just needed Eli to teach him to say, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."