I can’t stop thinking about you.
Last night, at about midnight, the phone aroused me from my happy slumber. It was Vance, the on-call resident, needing advice from me, as the supervising physician, on how to help a worried mother—you—who’d called our family health center’s after-hours service about your daughter’s worsening asthma.
Caroline Wellbery
In the middle of a five-way thoroughfare intersection, with the early-morning sun’s glare on my windshield, I hit the curb of the median and blew out my left front tire. Amid stopped traffic, I ran to collect my escaped hubcap, whose silver eye stared helplessly from among the automotive debris of previous accidents.
A policeman blocked the lanes until I could pilot my car into the gas station on the other side of the street. The attendant perched behind the bulletproof window told me that his mechanics wouldn’t be in until 9:00 am. I called the clinic to say I’d be late to work, but no one picked up the phone.
Paul Gross
In the wake of recent events, many speak about the need for conversations about race. In our country, the implications of race are a moral issue, a humanitarian issue, a justice issue and, yes, a medical issue. (One need only examine how racial categorization affects rates of death.) But what would this conversation about race look like?
Today, Pulse’s editor provides one offering. In August, we’ll invite all Pulse readers to join in with their stories, when Race will be the theme of More Voices.
I grew up in Stuyvesant Town, a middle-class housing development just north of Fourteenth Street on the east side of Manhattan. Built after World War II, Stuyvesant Town was a leafy and desirable place to live.
Hind Almazeedi
Arwa arrives late to the clinic. Her husband is parked outside waiting for her.
“You missed your last two appointments,” I say, checking her records. It’s been four months.
“I didn’t have a ride,” she shrugs.
Many of my patients live close to the primary-care center in Kuwait where I work as a family physician, but the desert heat makes it impossible to come here on foot. Two minutes under the sun can leave you delirious, and if you have asthma, the sudden dust storms are a constant threat. Without an air-conditioned car, you’re essentially homebound.
I know this, so I don’t argue with Arwa.
Raymond Abbott      Â
Donald Wyatt. I have written of him before and did not plan to write about him again. Then, just today, something happened.
I was slated to meet him at the usual place. We’ve been having lunch together once a month for more than seven years. Not coincidentally, it’s been exactly that many years since I last worked as a social worker for a local mental-health agency. Donald was one of my clients. When I was about to retire, his mother asked me if I would have coffee or lunch with Donald once in awhile.
“Sure,” I said, never thinking it would
Jo Marie Reilly
There’s a full moon tonight.
“That’s when crazy things happen,” my superstitious mom always says.
I’m a family physician doing weekend call at my urban community hospital. My pager rings incessantly. As I answer yet another call from the emergency room downstairs, I think, Maybe Mom has a point.
“Got a suicidal patient with nowhere to go,” the ER physician yells into the phone, against the background commotion. “This guy John has been here for three days. He’s casted on both feet and can’t walk. The insurance company’s authorization nurse says she can’t admit him because it’s not medically indicated–but if a doctor gives her an indication, she’ll authorize it. Can you do it?”
Jonathan Stockton
About the contributor:Â
Jonathan is completing his MFA in photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He photographs in areas where communities form around addiction and documents how these communities change over time. His thesis show will be on view May 11-23 at MassArt’s Bakalar Gallery in Boston, MA. His work can be found at jonathanstockton.net.
About the artwork:
“I met Jerry (not his real name) as he drank tall boys [24-ounce cans of beer] on a warm autumn
Jonathan Giftos
About the artist:Â
“I work as a primary care doctor at a clinic in the South Bronx. I believe it is part of my job, as a doctor, to advocate for my patients’ health both inside the exam room and out on the streets. I have enjoyed taking photographs since I was a little kid. After a long hiatus, I reconnected with street photography in the fall of 2014 through the Bronx Documentary Center. IÂ particularly enjoy using photography to highlight the strength and beauty of a borough more often known by outsiders for its poverty and struggles.
Karen Libertoff Harrington
As a medical educator in a hospital setting, I often tell first-year medical students about disparities in health care and about the vastly different quality of care that hospitals deliver, depending on their resources.Â
I tell my students how important it is to advocate for patients, to learn to navigate the healthcare system and to work respectfully with health professionals in order to get optimal care for your patients.
When my own son was hospitalized, I had an opportunity to put my teachings into practice, and found them wanting.
It was a Thursday evening in early spring, the first hint of green emerging on the lawn of my suburban Connecticut home.Â
My son David
Peter Ferrarone
At the outset, I confess that I have no experience in the medical field. I’m not a doctor or a nurse; I’m a recent college graduate, a writer and someone who’s interested in the world. And, all last summer, I was a volunteer in Uganda.Â
I’d met a Ugandan priest who was visiting the States on a lecture tour. He described his work overseeing an orphanage located in Western Uganda, a day’s bus ride from Rwanda and Kenya. When he invited me to go and help out there, I accepted.
Upon arriving, I discovered that the orphanage was a small, broken-down concrete house perched on a hill
Erin Imler
Jimmy Moss
little black boy
sit down.
fold your hands into your lap
and put your lap into order
now cry me a little song.
sing me a little note about meÂ
caring about what you care about,
then dream me a little dream.
and when your tears turn into
oases and exposed rivers
stand up
and pour me a little cup
fill it with every broken promise
and the unfulfilled moments of
belated birthdays and first days
of the school year when your
clothes were unkempt…then
tell me a little secret
about how–you wish your father
bothered enough to be a fatherÂ
or fathered another version of you,
so that you could have a friend
and then
write me a little poem.
make me
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