The Silence of Words

I enter moments after the doctor leaves. There are no easy words; I see the tidal wave of emotions crash across your deep blue eyes; the shock, the fear. You are my age, you shouldn't have to process the news you've just been dealt. You try and hide the tears that are steadily coursing down your face, pooling around the faded blue neck of your hospital gown; despite your furious attempts to wipe them away with angry balled-up fists. Quick one, two jabs, a boxer fighting a terrifying new opponent. I make you laugh; some stupid joke I've used hundreds of times before to put patients at ease, but it is gratifying to see you crack a goofy lop-sided grin. You tell me how relieved you are that you paid off you two-thousand dollar health care bill the other week, or you would surely be up the creek without a paddle now; and I reply with “well, I guess everything happens for a reason.” Not sure that it does though. The paramedics brought you to the hospital because you fell from a ladder and had sharp back pain. You thought the doctors would just give you a quick once over and maybe prescribe some of the those lovely pain pills. Instead you went through a battery of tests; CT scans, blood work. Diagnosis: metastatic colorectal cancer. Bet you didn't see that coming. As I put your armband on we share a moment of silence. All the unanswered questions and fears hang thick in the air. There is nothing I can say that will make it okay, I can't cure you; but I can stand beside you in this moment. I can at least do that.

Addict

You mirror my quiet desperation with your violence; your visceral mass of aching pulsating need, bloody and vulnerable. You don't care who sees you, judges, who steps around. Your wide, gaping want, gulping and sputtering. The now now now of it, a metronome of addiction.

A Cocaine Pain

Did I force you to buy the cocaine?
Did I spend the last forty-eight hours shoving it up your nose?
Nope.
Now you say your heart is racing? Get out, really?
So, what you are saying is that you want me to spend my hard-earned tax dollars
treating you; when we could be keeping the bed open for someone who is actually sick? Not someone who spent the last two days on a bender sticking foreign substances up their nostrils.
And no, I don't care that you are wearing an Armani suit, but I'm sure the psych patient who you get to sit next to for the rest of the evening would love to have a nice long chat about that very fact.