Local Doc on the Block
I got up before the alarm yesterday even though my sleep was fitful and restless. Though it was hard for me to know for sure, I was fairly certain that a series of gunshots had woken me up in the middle of the night, and that what had followed was a…
I was shocked to see a fresh layer of snow on the car. Already struggling with the bitingly cold temperature and running a few minutes late, I held an apple between my teeth and stepped out my front door. The street lay quiet and clean in the snow, and was relatively empty…
[Originally published in 2008. Today marks Sonia’s 29th birthday. Happy birthday, Sonia; we still miss you.] I watched the grainy, blocky video in silence. My friend was singing “Landslide” and I felt a certain tautness in my eyebrows and a peculiar heaviness in the corners of my mouth. By now it had…
“Who are you going to jump?” I asked sharply. “Look me in the eye and tell me.” He couldn’t do it. We kept talking in circles, getting more and more frustrated. There was big talk earlier about it, about banding together with friends to beat up some kid. I had confiscated a stick that…
“A‑dunk-a-dunk-a-dunk-achino!” The kid did some 70’s move as he sang and swiveled his knees. I was a little stunned. “Have you ever seen Jack and Jill?” he asked. Still stunned. “Uh, no?” “You know Al Pacino?” “Uh, yeah?” “In the movie, he does this commercial for Dunkin’ Donuts, and this thing where he goes…
After a brutal series of Christmas shifts in the ER, I had finally come home for the holidays. My mother and I were in the kitchen, talking like we used to. We had seen and loved the new Les Miserables film, and so I brought up an interesting question from an interview…
I originally wrote the following passage for a Good Friday reflection in 2007, unknowingly done one week before the Virginia Tech shooting. The intent in re-posting here is not to lessen the tragedy of what has just occurred in Connecticut, but to speak truth about how little has changed five years…
As per my count, there have been at least three shootings within my three block radius in the past three months. One resulted in a death. The first one happened at an intersection I had driven through literally a minute beforehand; I heard the gunshots nearby after getting home and, after seeing…
