While working on the ramp at Alaska Airlines might have been my deadliest job, it wasn’t my bloodiest. That dubious honor goes to the volunteer stint I served on the graveyard shift at Straub Hospital in downtown Honolulu. This was the ER closest to the main police station, so needless to say, shit went down.

One night a hooker came in fresh from a fight with another girl who had gone all Mike Tyson and bitten off a large chunk of her ear. The girl was scantily clad and beautiful, but covered in blood and in shock. The staff viewed her with the kind of black humor an ER staff has, and no small amount of contempt. “Double bag this one, boys” the head nurse said, donning a second set of gloves.

Given the delicate nature of reattaching an ear, the shift doctor pulled stitches duty. My job was to hold her head steady, but—and the doctor was very clear on this—I was not to hold her head down. “She can either hold her goddamned head still or she can live the rest of her life with one ear,” he growled after her failure to soldier up had led to several botched attempts.

I was no more a fan of prostitutes than anyone else. I grew up in Honolulu, where the tourist trade and local misery both supported large colonies of illegal sex workers—the high class hookers trolling the streets of Waikiki for businessmen with money to spend, and the low-rent drug whores servicing the whacked-out Johns of Hotel street, where there are no hotels to speak of.

My view of prostitution was typically American, firmly nestled between morality and paternalism. A prostitute was either someone of ill repute whose wiles endangered society, or a victim forced down a life-ending path by some criminal syndicate. Either way, prostitution was a scourge, the lowest rung of society, lower than even a beggar, who might lack pride, but still had honor.

But standing there in my scrubs, arms resting on the face of this poor girl facing permanent disfigurement, I suddenly felt my prejudices challenged. This person was not worthy of our fear, nor did she need our protection. What she needed was a little human kindness, a bit of common decency.

When the doctor began to sew, I held her head down despite his orders. I felt her wince and struggle beneath my meaty forearms, but I pressed them ever harder against her face, holding her head perfectly still. With my hand, I covered her eyes, feeling the steady stream of hot tears dripping onto my fingertips while the doctor sewed and snipped, pushing the needle into her ear, pulling the thread through, and tying it off.

When the doctor was done, the nurses cleaned and dressed the wound, processed her paperwork, and released her. I never saw her again, never heard word of her, and have no idea what happened to her. What I do know is that she has an ear because of me, maybe even a chance at a normal life.

I will never forget what I did for the girl in the ER that night. Not just because I am proud of it, but because of the lesson it taught me. It is the lesson of the good Samaritan: the challenge in life is not to provide help to someone you love, but to someone you were taught to hate.