Dianne Avey ~
So this is what it feels like
to be on the other side.
Hollowed out exhaustion,
rimmed with the chaotic clutter
of struggle and hope.
Like the beach after a tsunami,
all those once-important items,
now floating around uselessly.
I don’t know how to start this life
again.
This morning, they came
and took the bed away.
Katherine J. Munro
About the artist:
Originally from Vancouver, Canada, Katherine Munro now lives in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. She is a membership secretary for Haiku Canada and an associate member of the League of Canadian Poets. She has two leaflets with Leaf Press and co-edited Body of Evidence: A collection of killer ‘ku, an anthology of crime-related haiku.
About the artwork:
Visuals editor:
Sara Kohrt
There are three kinds of paperwork in my office.
The first kind of paperwork, the one the phrase evokes, is really mostly computer work. Although my shifts often run late, I don’t mind the time actually spent in the exam room with patients. The exhaustion hits as I finish a four-hour sprint only to realize that I have another one to two hours of documentation work. Then add on answering messages, dealing with lab results and filling out forms (some of which are on actual paper), and I can feel the joy of my job leaking away into mute surrender.
Syed M. Ahmed ~
Twenty-five years ago, having completed my family-medicine residency, I left Houston to start a two-year stint practicing in a remote village of fewer than 2,000 souls in the Appalachian Mountains of Ohio.
The day I arrived at my new workplace (a two-person practice in the only clinic for fifty miles), my new colleague Dr. Jones told me that she was leaving the next day on a two-week vacation.
Hearing this, I felt anxious, to say the least. I’d expected her to take time off, but so soon? Also, not only were this Appalachian town and its folks completely unknown to me, and vice-versa, but I was the first Asian physician to come to those parts.
Scott Janssen ~
“You need to get here now!” The nurse whispers anxiously. It’s after midnight. One of our hospice patients has just died at home, and her husband is threatening to shoot himself when the funeral home shows up.
“Has the funeral home been called?” I ask.
“No.”
“Does he have a gun or weapon?”
“We’re out in the country. There are deer heads on the wall.”
I try not to stereotype, but deer heads are a giveaway. There are probably lots of guns.
Karnjit Sarai
About the artist:
About the artwork:
Visuals editor:
Sara Kohrt
Allie Gips ~
Winter in New England and
night replaces afternoon, darkness wraps the streets while we are all still inside.
There are no windows in the Emergency Department anyway
except of course the window into this city–the stream of women with bruised arms
and orbits that they will not explain, the revolving door of opiate addicts
nodding off, crying out, praying for forgiveness, the chronic-pain patients who rip
apart all of your idealism and ambition, trade it in for a one-time hit of oxy.
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