Her smile was worth a million dollars, at 5 years old it is amazing how they will brighten up your day, her mom’s hands are callused and her face is tough like leather, she lifts the old weather worn scarf off her neck to wipe her brow after a long day digging through dirt so that others may eat. She is overjoyed to be on this soil, willing to be separated from her 2 children in Mexico in hopes of ensuring a future for her children and enough money to place food on the table.  He drinks, often I think to forget those he left back home or to make a day seem more tolerable. And we lecture on how this will shorten his life. He may actually be inclined to want to speed up the process. He is humble, underpaid and overworked. He is here intentionally, the new slave labor class of the American machine. Willing to do any work to stay alive, and we never deport the farmers, or look in the mirror as enablers of such a system. Discrimination is not a white man’s disease, as this man will discriminate the poor southern Oaxacan Mexican who sits in the waiting room. She has not bathed for a month and the smell can be overwhelming. When we dig deeper we realize it is because she has given birth and women in this culture will not bath or often leave the house for 40 days, in respect to God. She is 12 and pregnant a product of society’s neglect of contraceptive maintenance. He is 18 and I will fill out paperwork for statutory rape. The family is delighted their child is finally pregnant. The paperwork will get filled away, and her best friend will come in next week. I will be unable to prescribe med’s tomorrow for many of my sick patients because they will not be able to afford the medicines, and I will sleep poorly tonight on my $1000 mattress knowing that I could have done something but made a conscious decision not too. The world will continue to turn, and so will our heads to the many injustices. I am only one person, what can I do?