In the middle of Target is not the sort of place

I would expect to receive bad news.

The extra twenty dollars I saved by finding

my coveted piece of cookware there instead of

at Macy’s thirty minutes ago seemed somewhat

trite by comparison, and I did what I could to

smile and talk about the weekend weather instead.

It wasn’t as if I hadn’t lost patients before,

hadn’t watched a soul depart or told a family,

“I’m sorry,” in that hesitant, sonorous tone.

So I wasn’t sure why hearing about this one

felt so different and filled me with such disbelief,

as if someone had used my new roasting pan

to beat me in the face and then catch the

dripping blood from my nose while telling me it

wasn’t actually anodized aluminum,

wasn’t even worth the forty-two dollars

and eighty-nine cents I paid for it

with the money I earned while thinking I saved

a certain patient’s life.