By: Alexandra Weiss
the breakfast here is just like a hotel's,
transitory, sun colored and safe
expired
we try to say it in other words,
attempting to maintain clinical veneer
when everyone entering the hospital
is a patient sooner or later
in the concrete staff tunnels i see piles of
sharps containers waiting to be autoclaved
the sugar cube foundations of the monolith
of matches and popsicle sticks
covering the pit beyond identity
outside snow falls
the storm was supposed to hit days ago
and the patient tunnels run parallel, painted
cheerful colors with bright lights to dampen
the gravity of tests and scans
but there's more to the hospital
than this surfactant
last year the clinic staff wrapped
all the exam room doors in shiny wrapping paper
and put out bowls of candy canes
and snowmen made from coffee cups
the whole office smiles at a transplant email or paging dr. stork
hush falls when it's dr. cart in clinic
everyone hoping against hope that it's
not someone they know, that the patient recovers
there's the keychain she kept for years, a present
from a long dead study subject
we don't want it to hurt
she sees me crying
and takes me into room sixteen to talk it out
the research room
where i learned to run pulmonary function tests
and tells me she called hr to ask for
advice on how to help
people with depression
everyone just wants to help
i bring the remains of an extra large coffee
up the staff staircase
winter sun through glass on the gray
linoleum and heat turned all the way up
and tap my card on the fourth floor id reader
it's ash wednesday in the hospital
the snow seems to have stopped
and tops the cars outside like frosting on a cinammon roll
Alexandra Weiss is a literature student and coffee enthusiast who moved to Chicago from LA for the weather. She's been previously published in Plants & Poetry Journal, Another Chicago Magazine, Haggard and Halloo, and others, and will have a poem in the upcoming issue of From the Depths.
"I wrote this poem about a month before the pandemic reached Chicago. At the time, I was in the last few months of a student contract at the hospital and really struggling with my mental health. I'd been debating telling my boss, when she sat me down and offered to help. I felt very vulnerable, but also very lucky to have people in my life who cared and were so understanding.
People tend to think of the hospital as a bad place, a scary place. And it can be, but it can also be an everyday place, and sometimes a beautiful one. But the people who stick out careers in healthcare have such big hearts. It takes a great deal of strength to care for other people every day. I didn't have that kind of strength, that's why I left clinical research. But the people I used to work for, they're strong as hell, and have admirable empathy. Reading it aloud for the recording, I almost cried because it's been so long since I saw my former boss. Everything that's happened since I wrote this only furthers my admiration for healthcare workers."
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