SPOTLIGHT -
The Show Must Go On
A phone rings on stage like a flashback and we return to our fantasy that characters can die and revive, that the show must go on . . .
Psychiatrists Are Not the Retiring Kind
The past is prologue riding close behind. Give up your practice? And do what instead? Psychiatrists are not the retiring kind!
Not Guilty
Our daughter’s first day of Med School ten years ago, computer charged, a career choice . . .
Needlepoint Sampler
I imagine Emma on a winter night, an eight-year-old curled fireside in a wing chair, proving her skill with weeping willows...
Jolly Ranchers
They sulk and swear when I say, “Sorry, no Jollies,” tune out when I lecture about sugar, acid, and tooth decay- they’ve known sweetness and want more....
The Magistrates
My musician patient in a fetal curl, Tchaikovsky’s “Meditation” plays an endless loop against this climate controlled conspiracy of monitors and machines...
All the World’s Notes
The moment the maestro flicks his baton, an orchestra thunders and the pianist suffers a stroke. But everyone plays on...
Eye Contact
A ghostly glow frames the face of a man with nothing to hide...
Patient Interviewing 101
Always ask the name of their dog.
Conflict of Interest Form
They ask me to sign the moment before my poetry reading and I comply...
The Week the EMR Went Down
We fled the computer room like inmates after lightning fries the prison fence. Then we rounded with nurses who knew the doses and what made patients moan...
Overheard Conversation, ICU
Do I have to speak? I know you know...
Muses
I’ve been waiting for one of those nine bare-breasted sisters to land by my side and inspire a sonnet...
Monarchs and the President
The Monarch’s cortex, head of a pin, contains maps of Earth and heavens within...
Listening to Dead Patients
They love to talk like air traffic controllers: “Angle the spinal needle 20 degrees and push gently toward the midline.” And though I don’t say “Roger”...
Ordinary Mornings
Homeless men in Chinatown doorways flick cigarettes and cough, while a dozen nurses forge into Beach Street winter...
Calling in the Script
Covering for a colleague I begin to startle after the tenth call-med refill requests, side effect questions, and suicidal thoughts...
The Perfectionist
Rotten teeth, dirt creased face, he’d come in for a hot and a cot and collapsed with DTs...
The Hills of Paraguay
All summer southwest wind stirs the weeping willows the way my breath disturbs a settled life when I whisper the cancer diagnosis...
Yellow Warbler
Soaked in Mexican sunshine he’s powered back to the Berkshires, all the world’s yellow compressed into a firecracker...
The Tarts
I wanted this to be like a fairy tale walk in the woods before kids, careers, blood clots and bone mets...
Birthday Party
Green hills patched with April, snow and I’ve chosen to celebrate. with a full slate of patients.
The Juggler
After he juggles three chainsaws and spins twenty plates balanced on sticks, he moves to the grand finale: ten Bowler hats tossed across the arena and stacked on the ringmaster’s head.
We Wrote
We wrote through the night, between moonlight and morning, admissions and discharges, wrote when phones stopped ringing, when pagers stopped paging. We were raw, opening ourselves to chaos and mystery...
Prior Auths
Funny how fast we become prisoners with lost convictions as we fill out the forms, patients getting sicker while they wait.
Wound Healing
My doctor-wife squeezes her needle-nose tweezers and lifts the tiny knots high enough to snip with surgical scissors...
Boogie Child
Our time was Thursday, 5 o’clock, my psychiatrist’s door always opened wide, him wearing a wool sweater, sipping tea, lights dimmed to an endless twilight...
The Pledge
There was combat in Nam and I let my hair grow long, went to college, studied orgo until I became draft exempt...
Bush Doctors
County hospital GYN clinic back in the days of Power to the People, five hours for 50 women stirruped by our clinic nurse...
Musician Injuries
When the soloist lowers her Strad and takes a bow, she reveals the violin’s mark on her throat, which makes me think of Mozart...