“Is THIS a crisis?”
I find myself asking this question
everyday,
ever since the hospital said it was so.
Was it a crisis when she died
last week?
Or was it last month? We thought we
brought her back but it didn’t work,
not for long,
and I can still hear her husband
crying when I remember.
Is losing that leg a crisis?
Or going blind in that eye?
I know getting laid off is one,
even worse for being too sick and
too unprofitable to be cared for,
like being homeless or
addict or
shot.
Isn’t every day in the hospital
the crisis of a lifetime for a patient?
It’s true.
It’s always been true. But still,
I stare at the tube sprouting from
between my patient’s ribs
and touch my own scars, wincing.
Could that happen to me again?
Yup, that would be a bona fide
crisis.
Even more so if what got them
comes back to get me
again.
I tighten my mask.
You wouldn’t know it scrolling through
the social lives of everyone I envy
that our hallways are haunted,
our last reserves beyond spent
(indebted really),
and I barely have the energy to
read that damn email
much less reply.
and write a grant
to do research
to prevent some other
crisis.
The real crisis is
every crisis
that didn’t have to
crisis.
Sometimes I giggle a bit when
I hear the crisis word,
but only because I am cried out,
my kids are cried out,
all my friends are cried out,
all of us altogether always:
Crisis and Crying,
two of the three C words I want
to never hear again.
Leave a Reply