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Marianna Crane ~

As I sit in the exam room waiting for my first patient of the afternoon, the phone rings. It rings four more times before I realize that Amanda Ringwald, our eighty-year-old receptionist, hasn't come back from taking a rare lunch break.

I pick up the phone and say, "VA Hospital. Marianna Crane." Oops, I'm not back at the VA anymore. "Senior Clinic," I quickly add.

"Hello, my friend."

The familiar voice makes my throat tighten and my eyes water. How in God's name did he track me down at work?

"Mr. Foley. How are you?"

Judy Schaefer ~

How can I write a poem, nurse, in this pelted room? Nurse? Nurse!
Memory loss, southern pine--nurse, this is not a poem-writing-room
The floors ooze resin at your footsteps
          Spanish moss, from every wall
Spongy trod of medical students
Surgery went well, anesthesia lifted
Cologne of betadine, a boarish root for a vein
at the same time each morning. I welcome
the lady of the mop--tincture of mossy pine
back and forth, she says her prayers. She is my alarm clock.
I peek from crusty eyelids and dread the washcloth
Back and forth--path and path--room and nurse
How does one begin a poem? How to start?
Anesthesia has lifted long ago
I try to remember how I got here

Jessica Greenberg ~

"Code Blue, Interventional Radiology suite," blare the overhead speakers.

I am a new third-year medical student, doing my first rotation in internal medicine at Yale New Haven Hospital. This morning, I've been rounding on patients with my medical team.

The alarm sends us lumbering down the halls, struggling to keep our clogs from falling off our feet, clutching our white jackets to our chests to keep the pockets full of stethoscopes and pens and patient lists from bouncing.

Arriving in the IR suite, I stop about twenty feet from the middle-aged woman lying in the patient bed. More than a dozen physicians and nurses crowd around her, obscuring my view.