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Jordan Ryan is a former assistant secretary-general of the United Nations and former vice president of peace programs at The Carter Center. He lives in Decatur, Georgia, and is a frequent visitor to Maine.
On July 3, I collapsed on the island of Vinalhaven, 15 miles off midcoast Maine. What followed wasn’t just a personal emergency. It was a reminder of how much rural health care still relies on public systems, volunteers and coordination — and how close we are to letting that safety net unravel.
After losing consciousness on a wooden deck, my family rushed me to the island’s clinic. The team at Islands Community Medical Services quickly assessed the situation. Working remotely with my doctor in Atlanta, they determined I needed evacuation.
There was no time to lose. A group of volunteers assembled: firefighters, EMTs, nurses — even the fire chief. One lobsterman, who had been hauling traps since dawn, still found time to help push my stretcher to the ambulance. From there, I was taken to a small airstrip, where a retired airline captain stood ready with a medevac plane. Despite wind and weather, he flew me to the mainland. An ambulance met us and drove me to Pen Bay Hospital in Rockport.
The care I received — from island to hospital — was exceptional. I was treated with calm professionalism and compassion. Not once did I feel like a number or a burden.
After tests ruled out stroke and heart attack, I was discharged with a broken nose, a bruised face — and a full heart.
What I saw that day was quiet excellence: people working across distances and roles to keep someone alive. What troubles me is how fragile that care has become.
The very day I lay in that hospital bed, Congress passed major cuts to Medicaid, rural health and emergency preparedness. It was signed into law the next day. These aren’t abstract policies. Across the country, rural hospitals are closing. Clinics like Islands Community Medical Services are struggling to survive. Even regional hospitals like Pen Bay face staff shortages and budget gaps. Patients wait longer for care, or for transport that never comes. Volunteer EMS crews across Maine scramble for support. The safety net that once caught people like me is wearing thin.
This is the disconnect — between the care we rely on and the choices being made in Washington.
And yet, despite everything, this fragile network — clinics, pilots, dispatchers, nurses, local responders — still holds. It doesn’t ask for attention. It just does the job. It may not be glamorous, but it’s indispensable.
I was fortunate to have insurance and resources. But in that moment, none of it mattered. What mattered was that the system worked — just in time, just well enough — to prevent something worse.
As a former United Nations assistant secretary-general, I’ve worked in crisis zones around the world. What saved me in Maine was no different: trained professionals, reliable logistics and local systems that know how to function under pressure.
The question now is whether people in Maine — and across the country — are willing to invest in that kind of infrastructure. Not just roads and bridges, but human systems of care and coordination.
As fireworks lit the sky on the Fourth of July, I thought not of slogans, but of the people who showed up for me: the nurse practitioner who offered both skill and kindness, the lobsterman with a good heart, the pilot with nerves of steel.
They didn’t ask about politics. They didn’t pause to calculate cost. They just did what needed doing.
They didn’t need to “make America great again.” They already were.
What America needs now isn’t more cruelty or cuts. It needs more care. More respect. More investment in the people who show up when lives are on the line — not just in uniform, but in clinics, hospitals and volunteer firehouses. From nurses to pilots to lobstermen, they are the true infrastructure of this country.
That America — that Maine — is still alive. But it won’t survive without a fight.
We don’t just owe them gratitude.
We owe them a future.
