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!”

With an audience of Barbies, I would lull her

back to sleep with stories of heroic mice

and girls who brandished swords.

With the turn of a page she returns home

to sleep in her old bed, and I stand at her door

and listen to the soft sighs of her breathing

before she drives the pre-dawn dark

to surgery rounds, fourteen purulent hours

of missed meals, wound dehiscence,

and stress at the bottom of the pecking order.

I whisper, “Don’t let the bed bugs bite,”

praying she won’t faint in the OR,

praying attendings won’t pimp her too hard,

praying she won’t get a needle stick,

still desperate to protect her any way I can.