“I was a drummer,” he insisted, drawing my attention from his bulging belly, skin taut like a snare but less tympanic. My first solo paracentesis had history, jangling my nerves.
All tagged illness
“I was a drummer,” he insisted, drawing my attention from his bulging belly, skin taut like a snare but less tympanic. My first solo paracentesis had history, jangling my nerves.
She called him Peeg. He was a stuffed pig born at IKEA, on a trip when I needed candles and she needed distraction.
Relief licks my bones. Our infant son will not die.
I sit on the idling school bus, knitting a scarf and waiting for the other students to board so we can all go home, but the head that appears at the front of the bus belongs to my father, not a fellow student.
I’m staring at your hands. You’re using them to clarify medical words; to make shapes; to draw diagrams to help me understand what my brain can’t make sense of …
My son and I, we’ve been to so many doctors together. We had to go to several every week when he was little to try to get him better.
“You look very good,” she said, patting my arm. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Do I know you?”
I squatted on the sand at dusk, hoping the sound of the sea would soothe me, but it churned and roared like my stomach.
Little fingertips prod my eyelids, scouting before the assault.
My patient's oxygen levels were stable, yet he hunched over the edge of the bed, laboring to breathe. His eyes searched mine for answers.
“Sheila,” she said, looking worried. “Are you feeling ok?”
My right thumb pressed the button again to release more morphine. Covered in tubes and needles, surrounded by sounds generating persistent resonant vibration in the head, I shifted between states of consciousness …