“How Can I Help?”
January 24, 2019
One of several shows, which premiered in Fall 2018 and has received some attention, is New Amsterdam, based on the book, Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital, by Eric Manheimer. Perhaps it is not on the same scale as This is Us or A Million Little Things, but it is getting some hype. The TV drama’s main character is Dr. Max Goodwin, who becomes the new medical director of New Amsterdam Hospital in New York.
Within minutes of his first day on the job, Max makes significant changes by eliminating the cardiac surgery team (the highest source of revenue for the hospital), the waiting room, and any doctor who puts “billing over care”. Max does this while he tilts his head and pleasantly asks personnel in each area of the hospital, “How can I help?”. He is bound and determined to turn the hospital around and asks for three months to do so. At the same time his marriage is on shaky ground, and he has a serious type of throat cancer which he does not reveal to his staff and which he postpones treating for the sake of the hospital.
By the end of the Fall season, Dr. Goodwin tells his wife about his cancer and does agree to start treatment for it. However, he collapses on a remote lake dock, while spending a day with his wife, and on that cliffhanger the first season of New Amsterdam ends.
The first show of the Spring season, of course, picks up from there, and Max needs to be medivacked from the lake to New Amsterdam hospital in order to survive. Skipping over many details, Max now has to share his medical condition with his staff, who is asking him how they can help him continue to run the hospital while he receives treatment for his throat cancer. The hospital is scrambling to keep the hospital running while their main man is compromised.
Regardless of the less than favorable reviews the show receives, I like it and watch it each week. And I smile each time Max tilts his head and continues to use his catchphrase, “How can I help?” He has a bit of a Savior complex and really works diligently to save the hospital and its patients, most of whom walk in off the streets with no medical insurance. However, the show makes me think that we never need to scramble when we are in need of help because our Savior never sleeps or slumbers or is compromised.
The psalmist asks in Psalm 121, not “How can I help?” but “Where does my help come from?” The answer? “My help comes from the LORD who made heaven and earth.”
1 I lift up my eyes to the mountains. From where does my help come? 2 My help comes from the LORD who made heaven and earth.
Now only does the LORD help us, but he will do so now and forevermore:
8 The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.
Psalm 121: 1-2, 8
We never need fear that the LORD will be unavailable to us or at some remote place from us!
Fear not, … I am the one who helps you, declares the Lord;
Isaiah 41: 14