The First
A woman I volunteered with and hold most dear had
Comfort Care
The Janitor
Tears of Friendship
Final Breaths
My First Code
My adrenaline starts pumping. This new patient will be my first time running a code. I can’t help but be excited.
I claim my place at the head of the bed and start setting up my airway equipment. My brain is methodically running through the ACLS algorithms I have memorized.
Who Will Hear a Stored Voice?
My thirty-one year-old son had a newer laptop than mine and an iPhone 6. My iPhone 5 was a hand-me-down from him. (Prior to that, my iPhone 3 was given to me by a former resident, now friend, who upgraded to a 5 and was tired of mocking me for my flip phone.)
I have been paying my son’s
Please Don’t Ask
No Laughing Matter
For eight years I have endured intense pain in my left jaw. While having four surgeries, I have also undergone Botox treatment, acupuncture and physical therapy; taken a variety of medications prescribed by pain doctors, neurologists and my primary care physician; and used specially made creams, ice and heat on the affected area. Nothing has worked.
I Missed His Birthday, Again
Jef Gamblee
About the artist:
Jef Gamblee is a hospice chaplain from Westerville, Ohio. He first appeared in Pulse in December 2014. Jef is a second-career ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, having spent twenty-five years in commercial and corporate television as
The Lady Behind the Curtain
Scott Janssen
“Why don’t you talk loud enough for the whole damn hospital to hear you?”
I’ve just greeted my eighty-four-year-old grandmother, and now this irascible voice has erupted from behind the curtain that separates us from whoever is sharing Grandma’s room.
The nursing assistant who showed me in glares across the curtain at the other inhabitant.
“You shut up,” she tells the person firmly, “or I’ll smack you with a
The Center of Everything
The call came at midnight. “He died,” the voice on the other end said. No emotion.
“How are you, Alice?” I asked.