Recently I went to Duke for an appointment in the ultrasound clinic, part of the Duke Cancer Center. I had no reason to believe I had cancer, but due to a blood marker that has been high for a while, my primary care doctor wanted me to have an ultrasound of some of my organs. As I walked in the big glass doors under the sign that read “Duke Cancer Center”, a small chill ran across me.

Sitting in the waiting room with my hand-stitched American-made dress shoes, my custom-made dress shirt from Hong Kong, my custom cut belt from London, and my swiss-made watch, I happened to look around the waiting room and observe the other people there waiting for their appointments.

Some might have been there for preliminary screening (like me), or they might have cancer, or might be recovering from cancer. One older gentleman near me said to his companion (presumably his wife) “…well I think they will do a biopsy next.”

I noticed another couple walk in. They were clearly different from me. The man wore an old baseball cap, a dusty t-shirt, well-worn jeans, and working boots. They were in their early 60s. They spoke with strong southern (country) accents, and my guess is they came in from the rural farming areas just outside of our urban hub. They came to get healthcare services from Duke, one of the finest institutions in the world. At the check-in counter, the receptionist asked them the same questions she had asked me: name, date of birth, address, had you fallen in the past 3 months, what is your insurance? Theirs was “…Blue Cross Blue Shield…”

There were others in the waiting room: some were skin and bones, wearing caps to cover their heads that had been stripped of hair from chemo treatments. There were white people, and black people, and Latinas, and a skinny Asian couple.

In particular, I noticed the differences between the farming couple and me. We couldn’t have been more different. Yet, that day we were kin. That day we had a kinship around seeking to be healthy. In fact, all of us in that waiting room shared that kinship. I felt an immediate bond, an empathy for those in the waiting room. You could practically feel the worry and weight of the world in the waiting room.

One of the few things that binds us as humans is that we want to be want to be healthy. I think we have an innate sense that these bodies of ours are the only ones we have, and once they break down we die. Many, including me, fear illness, poor health, and ultimately our mortality, as a result. Healthcare brings us all to the table together, regardless of race, gender, or socio-economic status.

It brings us all to the table regardless of where we live as well. I have been blessed in my life to travel all around the world visiting healthcare facilities. From the most rural clinic in the mountains of Rwanda, to overcrowded urban public hospitals in India, to a modern private hospital in Jordan, I have seen that same look in the eyes of patients. A blend of fear, worry, and uncertainty, and looking for hope to hold onto.

Thank God that the farmer I saw at Duke had health insurance. Maybe he had a wad of cash stored away for cancer treatments, but even basic healthcare services would sink most families’ financially in the US if they had to pay 100% out of pocket. Cancer treatment at Duke for one person might run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars over time. That farmer, though he may have come in with the same fears and concerns as me, at least didn’t have to worry about his treatment bankrupting his family.

That is the developed world. The developing world is yet another story.

In the developing world, healthcare access is much more segregated. That farmer wouldn’t be sitting in the same waiting room as me and my kind. For reasons that vary by country – economic, cultural, social, geographical – the wealthy almost never would be sitting in the same waiting room seeking healthcare services as the poor.

Yet the subsistence farmer in Uganda or the wealthy businessman in Nigeria can both be ravaged by cancer, heart disease, or even Ebola. Look past their clothes and into their eyes, and you’ll see kinship. You’ll see that blend of fear and hope when they come to sit at the healthcare table. Yet, the Ugandan farmer may have to travel far to seek treatment. And then he might be going to a poorly equipped public facility without power or running water and with understaffed and undertrained healthcare workers.

Access to basic healthcare – the ability to access decent care near where you live at a cost that doesn’t bankrupt you – is an essential element of our humanness. It may not be realistic today, but imagine a world in the future where the Ugandan farmer could come in to a Duke-caliber healthcare facility for an ultrasound and with adequate health insurance to ease the financial burden. He might be sitting in the waiting room feeling the same fears as that Durham farmer I saw, but would have hope in the knowledge that he would get high quality healthcare at an affordable cost.

That’s a possible future worth working for.