Works

It is dark out now and it will probably be dark when we are done.

Room by room, they ask, “How am I doin’
doc?”

I cried in the dark auditorium as Dr. Fauci described how all of his patients used to die.

“KATIEEE!! I GOT THE AWARD!!” my phone
chirps on a Friday morning.

The pediatric one ignores me at school drop.

Cruising altitude, window, 17A.

It’s not just medicine, I tell them—

Give it air

“You were so brave when they fixed your leg!”

I comforted her while revealing the devastating diagnosis we found in her newborn daughter.

For the fourth time, the same question:

I really didn’t need that.

Memory floods in.

Another day — not all light, not all shadow.

I won’t hold your writing like a bird trembling, fragile

It happened again last semester.

In the ED, a handoff note read “likely malingering.”

The word “hospice” surprised us

Today I am sad.

In Minnesota, sturdiness is virtue.

Negative pressure room, windowless, fluorescent.

Hands weathered with age and Salvadoreño sun touch the raised scar along her sternum.

Working in the emergency department taught me how much of life is luck.

We take all people, all walks of life.

A phone call came to the clerkship director.

The patient had chronic spinal pain which was poorly controlled.