Written Words – Blues Dancing in the Booth

“This the place, sweetheart?” the cabdriver asked, pointing out the window at a flickering neon sign across the street that declared the establishment to be Mulligan’s. I didn’t need to look at the card in my clutch to know; I’d worn the edges of the plain business card – just the name and a street address – down to a soft roll in the months since it had shown up in my post box. Sam always let me know where he was in his own way.

I overpaid the cabbie with a crisp five-dollar note and told him to keep the change. He smiled greasily.

“Anything else, darling?”

“Forget I came,” I said, and slammed the door behind me. He saluted from behind the wheel and pulled out in a spray of water.

Under a flickering streetlight, I paused to turn up the collar of my trench coat against the cold wind then set off across the deserted street. A wave of cigarette smoke and liquor fumes rolled over me as I opened the door and raucous laughter blended unharmoniously with the sound of a jazz pianist. Definitely Sam’s kind of place.

A hulking bouncer loomed by the door, his square face oddly squashed, as if he’d been in too many fights and his nose had never recovered.

“Looking for someone?” he asked, stepping quickly to block my entrance. There were few women in the place and those that were, weren’t exactly ladies. He looked me up and down, taking in my dark trench coat and fedora with a curl of his lip. I stared him back in the eyes without a smile.

“I’m on the list. Kate Donaghue.”

It was a bit of gamble. I’d never been here before; I had no idea if I was on any list, or if they even kept one here. But me and Sam went way back. Just like the cards in my box, he’d never stopped throwing my name on the list when he was in town. I never came by.

Written Words – Superstition, justified

(An update/continuation of “On Superstition”)

Almost as soon as I finish typing the previous reflection, and before I can decide what to do with it – send it as an email, as originally intended, or post it – my pager goes off. At 3:35pm, a page from my resident assigns me a patient down in the ED with psychosis and a history of violence toward hospital staff. The patient denies everything I ask her and kicks me out of the room several times before I finally get her to let me stay and talk so I can at least get a mental status exam. After I’ve been in the room for over an hour with her, she looks me square in the eye and says levelly, “I don’t like you.” My pager goes off. I have a suicidal patient to see a few rooms down.

An hour and change later, that patient has been brought up to the floor – just before I was able to finish my exam, of course – but my resident is too busy seeing two other patients who’ve hit the floor while I was down in the ED. One of them is complaining about our facilities to anyone and everyone; the other is in the midst of opiate withdrawal.

While I busy myself writing up my patients and wait to present to the resident, my first lady makes it to the ward and starts hanging around the nurses’ station, glaring at me over the wall. I try to smile without any effect and quickly settle for avoiding eye contact. Within minutes, she’s progressed from glaring to declaring that I am turning red, shouting loudly that I am Satan, and trying to point out the “tail coming from [my] a**.” “Yes, you,” she yells when I glance up. “You are Satan!”

I escape as soon thereafter as I can with the instructions to email my write-ups to my resident and the knowledge that I’m being saved by a holiday weekend, meaning I don’t have to come in for the next two days.

I’m hoping I’m no longer Satan by then. Otherwise, I’m going to have an awkward daily progress interview Tuesday morning.

And my superstitions?

I’ll let you decide.

Written Words – On Superstition

Somewhat unsurprisingly, physicians have odd profession-specific superstitions that seem to transcend institutions. For instance, a particular resident or attending may be referred to as a “black cloud,” meaning someone for whom call days/nights or times on the floor are always busy, full of crises, have lots of admissions, etc. Alternately, someone can be a “white cloud,” for whom call days are quiet, nothing much happens, and everyone can relax. I was on overnight call with a “black cloud” for special care nursery, and that night we delivered something like five or six babies, including a preterm baby with respiratory distress, an emergency c-section, and a pair of twins, one of whom ended up going to the neonatal ICU after he developed breathing problems after reaching the nursery. We didn’t sleep at all for the entire night.

That somewhat unnecessarily long lead-in brings us to the present, if indirectly. I’m currently sitting in a resident work-room where I’ve been hanging out for the past five hours thanks to the magic of a Saturday call day; we finished all of our active work early in the morning and are now just waiting for patients to be admitted so we can go start working with them. My fellow med student and I would not be at all distressed if we did not, in fact, get any patients prior to 5pm, as our new resident told us this morning that when things are really quiet he’s been known to send people home around then instead of making them wait around until 9pm. However, I’ve been resisting the urge to comment on the lack of patients as the hours creep by, and we’ve just quietly sat and studied for our upcoming test.

The reason? If I mention aloud that we’ve made it to 3:30 without any admits, I’m bound to not only get an admission immediately but also one at 7pm, necessitating that I stay until 9:30 or 10pm when I’ll present the patient to the resident coming on to cover the night. It’s just the way things work around here, and I don’t want to curse myself. I’ve had a 7pm admit every single call night during this rotation and am beginning to suspect I’m gaining black cloud status a few years early.

Thanks, med school. You’ve not only killed my social life, massively sleep-deprived me, and made me neurotic about getting feedback, you’ve now given me delusions.

Written Words – The Dance

There’s something undeniably intimate about having that perfect dance. The moment when you realize you no longer have to worry about footwork or styling or reading his signals because it’s all there. Every shift, every lean, every breath is exactly where you knew, deep down, it would be. Had to be. The two of you are moving together, feeling the music course through your veins and out through every point where you touch. The brush of a leg or finger or breath against skin. The roll of a head or back or hips. Connections flow into connections and still the music pumps with your heart, strong and sure and forever. Until the song ends, the final notes settling into your skin and lungs with a finality that you only begin to feel when you release the end pose. The tension between you fades, hands drop away, and breath comes at its own pace. No one in the room knows him in the way you do at this moment, yet it is slipping away even as you slow your breaths to hold on to it for a little while longer. Thanks, you manage, and although it’s hopelessly inadequate, you know he understands.

Written Words – Unfold

Every evening I sit in my room,

Trapped in a cycle of sleep-work-study-sleep

And I dream of exploration,

Of fatigue of the body instead of the mind,

And of seeing the world unfold beneath my feet

Instead of watching it walk by my window.

Written Words – St. Louis Underground

The Metrolink tunnels in the center of the city look like subway tunnels in any city in the US: high, featureless concrete walls with narrow walkways and occasional safety lights. Nondescript. Anonymous.

But as you progress downtown, further into the old parts of the city, the tunnels begin to change. The ceiling slopes down and the walls press in until you feel any person caught in the tunnels would be crushed by a passing train. Even the material of the walls changes, shifting into bricks that would be red in the world above but appear dull brown in the irregularly spaced lights. Every few yards, small arches interrupt the walls, barely more than the height of an average man and perhaps two feet wide. In your mind’s eye, you can almost see the man making his way through the tunnels, listening all the time for the rattle and vibration of an approaching train, ducking into the nearest arch and pressing himself against the sloped wall, his dark lantern shielded to avoid attention.

The newer tunnels are standard, modern, aseptic. They fit the image of a city putting itself forward into the new century. The old tunnels are close, unpredictable, beautiful.

In the old tunnels, you can dream of adventure.

Written Words – An Early Morning Haiku

Fingers curl ‘round mine

A tiny yawn and a stretch

Hello, baby girl

Written Words – the subtlest thing

It’s the soft sway of beads – left to right – with the pedals’ rhythm
the soft sway of tassel – left to right – with the rhythm of hips

the colors bright
like the first color TV in grandma’s living room
or just the right lipstick in just the right light

the night purrs softly onward at a pace of its own
but each of us feels the rhythm
sways with it in perfect unison
and sighs contentedly

it is as if a Perfect Moment has descended upon a city
and only we are privileged enough to share it together

it is the subtlest thing
to know unrelentingly

why whisper?

Written Words – deux

How did that happen?
I’ve been running through the details
was running through them as it happened
and still can’t make any sense of it

what it was
what it means
and, of course, now
what I do about it

Written Words – Wishes and Glitter

It’s a little spark
one I’ve learned not to ignore
that says wishes and glitter
should always mix

a little hope
in the middle of impossible
that you breathe into me

it’s a little prayer
I whisper softly
to see you again

a little feeling
that just once
this is perfect