John Grey ~
Your bones tremble.
Freedom no longer suits you.
Warm sun on skin feels wasted.
The smell of pine…
where’s that old familiar ether?
So many active people on the sidewalk,
behind the wheels of cars.
Who have they come to visit?
Your daughter grabs your hand,
tries to pull you back into your old life,
but it’s no longer known in
Joy Liu
The room is stuffy, but the woman is shivering.
Her husband stands by her bedside. An interpreter that they’ve hired to stay with her day and night stands at the foot of the bed. And then there’s me, the doctor (I’m an intern), waiting to deliver one of many sad speeches I must give today.
Smiling wanly, she struggles into a sitting position and shakes my hand.
Even with
Hanan Rimawi
Ms. Connie was known, to her delight, as the Jackie Kennedy of Our Sanctuary nursing home. A tall, eighty-something woman who tucked splashy flowers into her voluminous curls, she’d strike up a conversation with anyone she encountered.
These chats were never a half-hearted “How are you?” tossed off before zipping away in her wheelchair. She’d ask an aide if her ailing daughter was feeling better, or check whether the receptionist’s son
Nolan Snider
People say it’s the last place
They want to go.
But when push comes to shove,
It’s the next-to-the-last place.
Although there are some who are
Ready to move on to that last place.
Others stay as long as they can in this,
The last place they thought
They would ever want to go.
Clinging on, year after year,
Staying here to
A voice at the back of my mind said, This is his illness–you can’t take it personally. But even so, I felt hurt by his crying.
I was nervous. I had never been this close to someone who was about to die. I introduced myself, but the patient was non-responsive. I told her that I was going to sit with her and that I would stay for a few hours. As I sat down, I noticed her breathing–it was irregular, and each breath sounded like she was slowly and painfully drowning. Almost trying to distract myself
Fredy El Sakr
“Help!” I yelled out of our open apartment door.
I was seven years old, and my family had recently emigrated from Egypt to the US. We’d been feeling elated that week because, after months of interviews, my father had matched into a pediatric residency.
That morning he’d awakened feeling nauseated. My mother and sister went to buy some soothing food. I noticed that he’d vomited in the bathroom; now he
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 call came at midnight. “He died,” the voice on the other end said. No emotion.
“How are you, Alice?” I asked.
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