A stranger drew her brain. The surgery worked.

Rebecca Simonitsch was 20 when she flew home to Charleston from Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, having just learned she was a candidate for brain surgery. A neurologist had traced her seizures to scar tissue in her left temporal lobe. She had absorbed maybe 10 to 15 percent of the conversation, and she had so many questions. Then the man in the next seat asked what she had been doing in Baltimore. He told her he specialized in neuropsychology and had worked with patients like her. For the next two hours, he listened, answered what the doctor had not, and then reached into his bag for a notebook. On old graph paper, balanced on the airplane tray table, he drew the brain and marked the region the surgeons would remove. The surgery worked. Simonitsch has been seizure-free for 25 years. She still has the piece of paper.