Marta walked into my office, a seasoned veteran. She had been getting monthly international normalized ratio checks, annual eye exams, and quarterly hemoglobin A1c tests for years. On my first day as an intern, she looked at me skeptically and said, “Doctor Sa-sss-ayna?” I was the new doctor with a funny name but also the one who was about to surprise her. For the Spanish-speaking patients in our residency office, we use local college students formally trained as Spanish interpreters to translate. I asked Marta, “Do you prefer to speak in English or Spanish?” She said “Spanish,” and as I began speaking to her in Spanish, a visible smile grew across her face. I completed that visit by giving her medication refills and carefully reminding her of their side effects. Several prescriptions and follow-up sessions later, she casually commented, “I never would have expected you spoke Spanish … what is your background again?” I smiled and explained that I learned to speak Spanish while training in Puerto Rico. I told her that Spanish was not my first language, but I became fluent speaking on the island. Speaking a second language had never seemed unusual to me; however, it soon began offering some unexpected benefits.