I’m in the ER with a kidney stone. There’s an IV for the pain. The young doctor comes and goes. (I am young, too. Twenty-six.) He leaves the clipboard with his notes, which I skim. It’s about me, so I feel it’s OK to read this sort-of-shared diary. A sentence leaps out. “Patient is stoic.” My boss had had to beg me to go to the hospital. Once, as a freshman, I’d broken down while presenting a paper on Holocaust poetry. My tears were horrifying; we rarely cried in my family. Stoic: Finally I had a diagnosis for my condition.
Lynn Mundell is the author of the flash collection Let Our Bodies Be Returned to Us (Yemessee). Find Lynn at lynnmundell.com, on Twitter @lynnfmundell and on Instagram @mundelllynn.