He’s startled by
the clicking pen,
the toilet flush,
the oxygen.
He sits up with
pinballing eyes,
jackhammer legs,
nutcracker cries.
He pinches thighs,
then nods,
then sighs,
then, if convinced,
again he tries,
To shusshhh the bombings,
shusshhh the mice.
Just talking to her settles me.
I love the call. I love it all:
The silly in the serious,
Delightfully delirious,
The mask I drop so she can hear
The quiver in my voice so clear.
What stops me, then, from calling her?
Like holding on can save my life,
But letting go will ease my palms.
No wonder both my hands are clean,
While rest of me is Jackson Pollock
On the ledge of bottom rock.
It isn’t nice to make a scene.
But neither’s when you’re never seen.
It isn’t nice to fight aloud.
But neither’s when no fight’s allowed.
It isn’t nice to say “you should”.
But neither’s when you’re always shooed.
It isn’t nice to poorly rhyme.
But neither’s when your art has rime.
I “caught” them with their party cones
And chocolate cake that read “Hap Bi”.
They sorry-sorryied, wiping hands.
I sorry-sorryied, let them be.
I filled our bottles at the tap
And picked a promo flyer up.
It promised me some “carefree care”.
I turned it to a buttercup.
I left it with a sticky-note
Beside the always-ringing phone.
Our morning meds tray had a piece
Of smiling cake under a cone.
His writing starts with noisy breaths.
His eyes are closed, his jaw relaxed,
His body stilling for a sec.
He opens to a gentle gaze,
And scribbles in a practised hand
The bullet points of his advice.
Unlike the other doctors here,
He seems unhurried, strangely still,
Though like the other doctors here,
He visits dozens patients too.
The nurses tell me he has seen,
By far, the most demises.
“His Speshal-tea is death,” one says.
Another slaps her wrist, corrects,
“He deals with palliative care.”
“There’s not much money in that one,”
The former giggles through her mask.
I see him talking to a man
Who has been shouting all day long –
His wife is still in cancer ward,
In far more pain than she can bear.
The doctor stands unflappable,
And somehow it’s contagious:
The raving man’s behaving now.
If ever things get even worse,
I’d want this man to talk to Mom.
I ask the wheelchair guy to stop,
To take a little break and shop
Whatever orange notes can buy.
I tell him he deserves the dime.
Transporting patients all the time
Can be a damper on a guy.
He thanks me, winks, and runs along.
I stand like there is nothing wrong:
A patient’s transport gone awry
Upon a rusty bridge that cords
The ICUs to private wards
And opens out into the sky.
He likes the nightly summer breeze.
The way it tickles through the trees.
The way it melts into his sigh.
To feel it, not just see it through
The tinted glass in AC rooms.
To feel it cool his running eye.
The wheelchair guy is back too soon.
He puffs into the rising moon.
It’s time again to go inside.
So many who have lost someone,
Or losing one with every hour,
Or losing in the fight themselves,
And yet they aren’t lost at all.
They clean up every morning still.
They dress up, practice smiling still.
They cheer up patients sitting still.
And yet they aren’t lost at all.
They’re past the sudden waterfalls.
They’re past the pacing down the halls.
They’re past the sympathetic calls.
And yet they aren’t lost at all.
It’s part of living on, they say.
You have to find the strength someway.
To grow up, show up, everyday
Until you aren’t lost at all.
He’s eating in his sleep tonight.
His fragile fingers gripping ’round
Some phantom spoon he doesn’t like.
He tests it as he often does:
A twist to left, a twist to right,
To check the weight against his wrist.
The writer’s cramp from forty years
Of blackboard writing with a chalk
Has left his wrists too shaky now.
Without the proper weight, he spills
The spoonful he can barely lift.
He’s trying different cutlery,
And nothing seems to do the trick.
He makes his hand a trowel now –
The one he taught me how to make
So many many years ago,
So I could eat without his help.
I hold his trowel hand tonight,
And every night of troubled sleep,
Until again he’s fit to grip
The stainless heavy spoons he likes.
He couldn’t pass his high-school tests,
But now the doctors lean on him
To figure out the spots on scans
That do not fit the pigeonholes
Their textbooks, journals, meets define.
Officially, he runs machines
That diagnose the heart and brain.
But thirty years of reading scans
And following the patients’ health
Has given him a finger-feel
For what the doctors don’t detect.
The doctors hate him to their bones,
Except the ones who’re still secure.
They hate his reputation, yes,
His grip on union reps as well,
But what they hate the most in him
Is that he gives them no excuse
To tell on him, to throw him out,
To discipline his acts somehow.
He’s far too clever for them all.
Or so the man would like me think
At 4am, when no one else
Would stop to share a word with him.
(He did, however, find a spot
The doctors missed in our reports.
They brushed it off as just a fluke.)
She cleans up after everyone.
Her shift is, therefore, longer than
The longest shift plus overtime.
The overtime is for the docs.
She only gets her husband’s wrath
And children’s tantrums, hating her.
They want her sitting down at home,
But also want the clothes she buys,
The pocket money she provides,
The smartphone that her job supplies.
She’s hardly holding grudges, though.
She loves her job: it’s meaningful.
She knows she helps in saving lives
By “killing germs before they harm,”
By “cleaning clutter from the mind,”
By “smiling when one needs a smile.”
She finds her title funny, though.
“They want to keep me in my house.
And here I am with housekeeping.”
She does have such a genuine smile.
Minakhi Misra 