“Who am I, do you know me,” she cries,
this day when earth has turned to rot and mud.
she can not see but for the blaze of anger,
she can not hear the softer voices calling.
The new patient’s name is Emmanuel. He was sent from his nursing home to our emergency room with a cough and fever. The oxygen level in his blood is well below normal, and he’s gasping for air.
It’s my third week in the local community hospital ER. I’ve been putting in extra on-call time during the COVID pandemic. It’s been rough to get back into the emergency setting while continuing my day job as a
I notice the name on the waiting room
tab; it’s not a remarkable name,
but one I remember
from elementary school
Priscilla Mainardi ~
Your skin pale with worry,
your mouth a straight line,
the fear in your eyes–
all this told me,
more than the nausea,
more than the fact that I couldn’t move my head,
that something was really wrong.
You thought I wouldn’t see.
I looked up at the ceiling,
at its pattern of dots,
white, and brighter white,
that could
Richard Weiss ~
At two am its insistent ring ambushes me awake.
I whisper, not wanting to disturb my wife or rouse
the dog who will whine for food, write down
the name and number before it’s jumbled, swallow
my resentment on being awakened and listen
to his story–then ask those practiced questions,
scrolling his body from one organ to another.
Tell me about the pain–what it
Meghan G. Liroff ~
Angela Harris has been here in the hospital for six hours, awaiting the results of her CAT scan. I won’t take responsibility for all of that wait time: complicated CAT scans and labs do take a significant amount of time to perform. But she didn’t need to wait the last hour.
She was waiting on me–her emergency physician–because I needed to confirm her cancer diagnosis with radiology, arrange some oncology follow-up…and
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
Meghan G. Liroff ~
“Why so short?” says the four-year-old girl who’s here with an upper-respiratory infection.
Standing safely between her dad’s knees, she wears a bright pink jumpsuit. Her cheeks are dimpled; her hair is piled in a frizzy bun. She looks me up and down, as if trying to make sense of me.
I can’t help laughing.
It’s true, I think. At five feet even, I’m not blessed with height–but I
At least 3 people arriving. The ED is bustling, preparing for their arrival. Blade and Prolene stitch in my scrub pocket, I am ready. We are ready.
For a moment the ED almost seems silent.
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.
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