| Half-dead from the vigil we are scattered like hats tossed on the graceless chairs. My father, alone in bed stirs first for the morning parade. So much blood lost since we met this doctor, a student who chased blood counts at a Boston mecca. Years later, 6 AM in improbable Piscataway, NJ, our student, the new Chief turns to his interns: so late, he jokes, for their last stop on rounds. My father levers up on elbows, arms shaking for strength to meet eye to eye, and the doctor crows a jogging report; the miles he ran, the beauty my father missed in the sky before dawn. Without touch of word or hand, he rips the microcasette from a holster on his hip, and my father collapses back, the doctor chanting the labs, each number a needle stick, a scalpel's nick we remember after all the blood is counted. |
© CME LLC
12/97
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