‘This is breathtakingly beautiful’: Touching story comes full-circle after teacher receives operation from the student she never gave up on

Love is like a hydra. For every act of love you commit to, you plant the seeds for two or three more down the line, even if those particular blossoms don’t bloom for many years.

But love doesn’t always find its way back to its source. Life gets complicated, people become lost in one world and find themselves in another, and the chips of fate just tend to keep falling without significant incident. Sometimes, however, they fall just right, and it’s far more than enough to activate our tear ducts and make us believe in the best possible version of this Earth.

Distributed by TikTok‘s @ms.e_hustla, we’re introduced to one Mrs. Chamberlain, a schoolteacher who recently underwent major surgery and is now recovering. She reads us a letter with a shaky voice and wet eyes, and we soon learn that the doctor who operated on her, Derek, used to be one of her students. In the letter, Derek credits his remarkable life path to the love, hope, and belief that Mrs. Chamberlain instilled within him as a young boy, and expresses his enduring gratitude in heartwarming detail.

But it doesn’t end there. Derek also informs Mrs. Chamberlain that her surgery won’t be costing her a dime (which Mrs. Chamberlain, beholden to “teacher money,” was concerned about before hearing this piece of info), and it’s not until she turns around and sees Derek sitting there that the waterworks (hers and ours) take their final form. “It was you,” Derek keeps saying to his sobbing former teacher, “it was you who made me who I am today.”

It’s an immaculately beautiful moment, but Mrs. Chamberlain’s initial concern about the cost of her surgery is no fine print. According to Niche, teachers in the United States make anywhere between just under $30,000 to just under $65,000 in yearly salaries, depending on their years of experience and whether they’re working in the public or private sector. And according to Debt.org, surgery in the United States can come with bills consisting of over $100,000, and that’s not accounting for the hospital stay or other expenses, either. Altogether, it’s no pretty equation.

But there’s plenty of time to allow the country’s dire state of medical affairs to take center stage, because this is one parade that should not be rained upon under any circumstances. Indeed, in a world of predatory healthcare systems, be a Mrs. Chamberlain, and then be a Derek later in life. The reward will find you in its own way.