Rachel Kowalsky is a Guatemalan and Ashkenazi pediatric emergency physician. She lives, works, and teaches medical humanities in New York. She is the winner of the New England Journal of Medicine’s 2021 short fiction contest, and has published her stories and essays in jmww, Orca, Podium, HerStry, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and the anthologies
Real Life of a Pediatrician and Perspectives. She will never forget her piano teacher, Clara Shen, who had two gleaming Steinways and an enormous heart.