SPOTLIGHT -
Numbers Game
Med school finals, ten backpack pounds of biochem hauled for months, my epiphany: I would never know more about glucose metabolism than that morning...
Taking the Pulse
Introduce yourself, shake hands, sit down. Always sit down. Then ask for permission...
Lung Cancer in Reverse Times-Lapse Photography
At three breaths before death a blue latex hand pulls out a trach tube, a blade skims over the zipped up hole, and droplets of blood are sucked into skin...
The Intern’s Spot
We teach every intern how to find the place where they can lay down a silver stethoscope and listen to everything...
Professionalism Defined
After your exams, after your diploma, after all the nights on call, missed dinners and diagnoses, after your apologies...
The Ladder
Bolted to the bedroom loft, twenty feet high with lacquered sides and honey colored risers polished with pine-scented wax-these are the rungs I climb to the feather bed, candle, and bottle of red wine...
The Yellow Pages
Sleepless in New Haven, I read this hotel room’s only other book. Power-suited lawyers on the back cover advertise to sue for antidepressant suicides if families will call 1-800-BAD-MEDS...
Letter From Luke
He wrote that he didn’t know what to say to comfort us, so he decided to describe the view from his rented room near Sydney...
Scene From The Fall: Mental Ward US Military Hospital, Nuremberg, Germany
Here we present an excerpt from a screenplay to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps.
End of the Season
Half price T-shirts and ice cream cones, no more tomatoes or New York Times, people out patching the roof, putting up storms, the last guests gone tomorrow.
At the Monhegan Island General Store
I’m happy to be off the trail, out of the wind and salt spray, safe from the fog’s cold claw...
The Hang Gliders
Dead into a wall of wind, they cliff jump with parabolic wings curled over pilots cradled in goose down and canvas.
Naked Mole Rat
I’m glad we’re studying this one, a lusty, almost immortal guy living in his dark tunnels of love.
Über Coca
He didn’t notice snow falling in the Krankenhaus courtyard the night he fell in love. A mere intern, castrated by Jew-hating med school professors...
After Divorce Court
I drive west along the black granite bed of Cold River as it sweeps down the mountain. My best friend drives the same road east, the lies his wife told the judge trailing us...
The Stethoscope
Laennec was running late when he saw children send sounds through a wooden beam...
VIP Referral
When a health system honcho asks me to see his thirty-year-old son “for a little anxiety” I can only agree. He arrives with a girlfriend, the couple dressed like characters from an Armani ad...
The Fisherman
Tears track his leathered face like seawater spilled from a sinking hull...
Still Practicing
My penmanship sucks. So does my typing. I’ve been this way since seventh grade...
A Psychiatrist’s Diet
Looking out at a flat gray sea, I try to imagine the chasms in the ocean’s floor where lava laced with strontium pours...
Caring for the Patient
I want my patients to believe I consider Peabody’s advice before I see them, that I recognize our shared humanity...
Up in Smoke
He smoked trabucos, mild miniatures produced by the Austrian monopoly, but preferred Don Pedros and Reina Cubanos...
Looking Like a God
The trouble with looking like a God becomes clear after we learn to wear our mask of omnipotence, pretending to know the answers to questions...
A Lobsterman Looks at the Sea
His new hip healed in, we’re working on a bluff, talking doctors and health care reform as we shove a new propane tank into place...
A Curious Kind of Love
Sometimes when proposing a treatment plan, I flash to an image of my patient seated beside me on this orchard bench watching orioles court in May’s sharp sunlight...
Lazy Birder
Dawn is at five, but I sleep past nine, not caring if I miss a few warblers flying home for summer...
Hit by a Bus
That’s how he’d like to go, he tells me, not by this slow seeding of liver and spine, not with all the tears and long good-byes.
Sleeping Daughter
The Big Bad Wolf and Wicked Witch liked to creak the stairs by her bedroom door and wake her from dreams calling, “Daddy!”
Steel Against Steel
On the cracked macadam court in the shadow of The Castle on the Hill, below fake gun turrets built with bricks...
Talk Radio, 2 am
I’m driving home from the ER, not ready for sleep, eaten up by memories of my mistakes...