I picked her up gingerly, tubes and wires trailing, getting in the way of my instinctive urge to press her to me and squeeze her and hold her tight. Instead I carefully sat in the squeaky chair and rocked her till the moon was high, willing her tiny body to somehow heal.
I’m not ashamed that I met you in a waiting room.
In the grand scheme of things, where it was that we met was one of the reasons why we got along so well. I was scheduled to meet with a neurologist that day and was scared out of my mind. I thought I was too young for an illness so serious that my brain needed a medical exam, that my headaches and spotted vision were something of less importance, fatigue maybe. Still, you heard the quaver in my voice as I talked to the secretary, somehow sensed my anxiety all the way across the empty waiting room.
For some one starting to loose their vision, you were frighteningly observant.
And so you talked to me, told me you knew all about being too young to be sick. Here you were, you said, though not bitterly, almost twenty and almost blind. New-found adulthood taken away and replaced with helplessness.
Why you sounded pleasant, almost jovial, at that horrifying pospect I was not sure. But you made me laugh during my hour wait to see the doctor, made me lean forward in my sanitized plastic chair in conversational excitement, propping my elbows up on tattered stacks of magazines as I forgot all about my fear of the future.
After all, you were no stranger to waiting rooms.
When my name was finally called, misspronounced as usual, I thanked you for making me feel better and said I hoped we would meet again some day. You smiled, eyes fixed on a place a few chairs over from me.
When I finally got out of my appointment, though, you were already gone.
I found a little scrap of paper with a phone number waiting on my seat, bearing the wobbly words, “Call me.”
When I think medical, I do not associate it with writing! I associate it with sterile doctors offices and hospitals that smell like sick people. I’d rather write about something other than medical! On the other hand, it does make me think of being a new mom. I love that thought. It gives medical a whole new perspective!
She stared at him. “That’s all you have to say? After all of this time? After what we’ve been through together?”
“Together?” He mocked. “Don’t give me all that rot. You sound like some whiny housewife right out of a television drama.”
“At least I’m not trying to be a self-centered pyscho-”
“CUT!” The director yelled. He rubbed his forehead. “Lucy, Dan, I know you two have been getting along now, but the fight scenes are scripted for a reason. You have to repeat the actual words with feeling, not water it down for–oh never mind.”
The actor and actress in question were already across the set in each others’ arms.
“Medical thing?” The director repeated. He rubbed his face.
“Medical?” Serena asked, her usually light tone full of anger. “You think I can do something medical? I’m a healer, it’s my gift, but I never went to med school, I never wanted to be a doctor, and you think that I can magically do something medical WITHOUT MAGIC?! Tell me, Drake, can you make that refrigerator lift without touching it without your telekinesis? Gwen, can you disappear now, when your power doesn’t work? And Leo, can you levitate without any magic? Hm? Just because regular humans can do what I do doesn’t mean I can do what they can do!”
Leo stepped forward, placing a hand on his girlfriend’s shoulder. “Serena, sweetie, we’re sorry.”
Serena blinked. “No, I’m sorry,” she said, the anger gone from her voice. “I shouldn’t have yelled.”
The medical profession is weird. They make a lot of money and wear funny clothes. I wonder how many people are actually in it because they truly want to help people that are sick… walk them through the process of getting better.
here’s something i bet you didn’t know:
friendships rot as surely as corpses
a slow decay, one without dewdrops on roses
eroding with the passage of time;
as a wind carves a sheer cliff in a canyon
her lips curved in a mirthless smile
and as she turned away from me,
someone i loved became only
a memory.
with surgical precision she penned her first and last name in the upper right hand corner of the application. She was so nervous she felt like she might even screw that up. nothing had ever seemed more out of her reach in her whole life. she sat at the glass table in the white walled room, on top of the white fur throw rug that covered the white floors, her in a bright green dress with her most delicate fake gold accessories, but in the silence she could feel them weighing down her ears and neck.
I’m in the medical field. It’s scientific, but also spiritual. It needs to be both for people to heal. I can give medicines and I can listen. I can dress a wound and I can allow expression of feelings.
Many people in my family have been in the medical industry. I wonder if I will follow in their footsteps. I want to find myself and discover my true calling in my life and career. I don’t want anyone else to choose for me, I want to choose myself, but I also want to be sure.
medical is sounding like such a boring word right now . there is so much money in the medical field. i think that there should be much more focus on health building and promoting health then fixing problesm..like more strenght training so taht there will not be so much ow im hurt fix me blubber jubber ahhhhk!
I have family in the medical industry. I always thought I would be too. It is interesting and I enjoy it, but is that really what I’m meant to do in my life? I keep questioning it and I wish I could know what my calling really is.
would a heartbreak be considered a medical condition? if so, i’m going under cardiac arrest. oh god, save me. my heart is bursting at the seams. it’s been broken and bleeding for too long. i must not suffer much longer. i…i’m…i…don’t know if i…i…can…hold on…..______
There was something pulsingly cool about the room. It wreaked of chrome and an edge of health. There were surgeons needles and strange instruments on the tray beside my bed and I could feel a choking pain rising up in me. There was nothing to do but pray that the women walking around in their seafoam green nurses uniform were as kind as children’s stories would lead me to believe.
Medical school.
Medical help.
That was… that was the plan, wasn’t it?
I wanted to learn how to help people, to fix them, to figure out what was wrong and what can be done about it. I wanted to… to heal people. I didn’t want whatever it was I’m doing now.
This wasn’t, I don’t even know what this was.
I looked back at the bloodstained table and felt bile rise in my throat.
Sometimes, I didn’t know what I was anymore.
A clever way of going broke without any choice. Or a way of making vast sums of money on a basic human right which in theory should be free to all and sundry.
The sterile metal instruments reflected the harsh glare of an sickly, overhead fluorescent light. A distinct scent of lysol hung in the air, and the sheets smelled of thinly veiled mildew.
I’d break into the medical lab with my art student buddies, and we’d rearrange all the equipment: stethoscopes and AEDs, the heart rate monitor comes apart pretty damn easily, and it’s always fun to see how many different bones have been knocked loose on the skeleton this week. We used to revamp the layout to confuse the students, and then escape, leaving finger-painted messages behind, changing the painfully white lab coats into tye-dyed artifacts that med students never, ever wore.
I’ve been to so many hospitals over the year. They’re so bland and clinical, I just find them off. The perfect hospital would have a lot of light, fresh air and colour.
I hate going to the doctor or anything like that. Oh, I especially dislike going to hospitals because they’re so depressing and it just ruins your mood. To think of all the people that are suffering due to their health issues. It’s just sad.
His paws dangling, just a lifeless body in my arms. His time was over. It was time for him to sleep. His medical condition couldn’t last no longer, he couldn’t last no longer. From puppyhood to adulthood. I loved him from the start he gave me those puppy eyes. Vulnerable and precious.
The US medical industry is incredibly fucked up. Doctors are taught how to treat symptoms more so than curing the cause of symptoms. With what? Pillspillspillspillspills…..we are a society of pill poppers, never paying attention to the true cause and fighting back with nature and the millennia of genetics that allow our bodies to heal naturally.
He stood outside the door of the medical plaza, staring at the crumbling, faded plaster and the torn scraps of posters and advertisements that had once lined the walls. He clutched his left arm to his chest, wincing as a fresh stab of pain lanced from his fingertips to his shoulder. A car horn blared down the street, the sound bouncing off the ramshackle buildings lining the block.
This place didn’t look promising at all. He tried to flex his fingers, still attempting to convince himself he wasn’t hurt that badly. Another flare of pain made him grit his teeth.
He sighed. There was nothing for it then. With a deep breath, he reached his good hand out and grasped the oily, dirty door handle.
‘You need medical assistance?’ The fireman asked gesturing towards the ambulance where the others were crowded around. I shook my head.
‘I think that I’m fine,’ I answered. My throat felt sore from the exposure to the smoke but I definetly didn’t want to have to face the others just yet.
It is the cold steel tongs and the white lab coats. It is the scalpels that cut and the thread that mends. It is the sterile place that transforms complex human experiences in to short mathematical calculations of diagnosis and prognosis. It is the club that only accepts one type of verdict, and that is their own. It is also the thing that I will thank god when they mend me up from injury and curse when they treat me like an annoyance to their busy schedule.
I won’t make a big deal of this, like anyone else would when they say they need medical attention. My pulse rate elevating and my breathing slowing, slowing. My vision blurs then clarifies and focuses solely on you. Help me regain my normal state of living without the sudden charming attacks that keep me frozen in place and in mind.
I have a medical problem. I’m me.
I’m lazy. I’m bored. I’m boring.
Help me doc. What do I take to get over this? How do I spur some excitement?
How do I get over this funk of being me to get to the root of the problem and become the top version of myself I know I am?
pale blue walls. White linoleum floors. She liked walking in circles around the hallway of floor 15 door 6. She could pretend she was alone, lost in her own thoughts, the echoing of naked feet her only companion. As often as breath, she would remind herself of the necessity of getting used to her new surroundings–Cloverdale Hospital.
Doctors. Too often in my lifetime. When I was young I was in the hospital a lot. I broke a lot of bones. SO many that I became friends with the X-ray technicians, and they thought my mom was beating me. Poor woman. She had to defend herself against them, and have them call the school. It wasn’t until I was 15 that I was diagnosed wi
tiresome. it was so tiresome. cleaning out those bedpans and sitting on the floor waiting for the other doctors and orderlies to give her orders. she wanted a moment to wash her face, maybe even swipe on a little bit of black mascara, but that was even too much. every free moment she had, she’d use on a box of apple juice, complete with a straw. that was all.
of all the office buildings on the block, a shabby medical clinic caught my eye. huddled around the door were three young guys, watching an older man rant at cars as they passed.
it felt as though someone had stabbed her.
there should have been blood pouring from her heart like the tears from her eyes
her family should have found her and called a doctor
they should have felt her pain and cried with her
there should have been a deep wound in her skin
there should have been a scar
there should have been…
but there wasn’t
so she sat there, clutching at her broken heart,
and trying to keep it from falling out of her chest and onto the floor
where it would cease to beat and die
where she should die with it, alone
she should…
but she wouldn’t
she had to stay strong and hide her pain
This isn’t the time to talk medical with Grandpa in the hospital, lying in the same bed Grandma was in a year ago. Before she died. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t live without her now. That is not a medical problem.
She took medical studies, always thought of it as an interesting thing. Never really expected, to have so much useless stuff, chemical reactions, and names which are hard enough to make a knot from your tongue. But still, she was happy with her choice. It was a good decision.
They stared at him as he lay on the cold slab. Two heart beats registered on the monitor. Dr. Michael stood poised with the scalpel. He sliced through the rough skin of the alien ignoring his piercing screams. No longer would it remain a medical mystery to them.
Fill me in with the medical necessities that will numb my mind of its pain of being lonely. Lonely is a good thing to be, she always told me.
I picked her up gingerly, tubes and wires trailing, getting in the way of my instinctive urge to press her to me and squeeze her and hold her tight. Instead I carefully sat in the squeaky chair and rocked her till the moon was high, willing her tiny body to somehow heal.
I’m not ashamed that I met you in a waiting room.
In the grand scheme of things, where it was that we met was one of the reasons why we got along so well. I was scheduled to meet with a neurologist that day and was scared out of my mind. I thought I was too young for an illness so serious that my brain needed a medical exam, that my headaches and spotted vision were something of less importance, fatigue maybe. Still, you heard the quaver in my voice as I talked to the secretary, somehow sensed my anxiety all the way across the empty waiting room.
For some one starting to loose their vision, you were frighteningly observant.
And so you talked to me, told me you knew all about being too young to be sick. Here you were, you said, though not bitterly, almost twenty and almost blind. New-found adulthood taken away and replaced with helplessness.
Why you sounded pleasant, almost jovial, at that horrifying pospect I was not sure. But you made me laugh during my hour wait to see the doctor, made me lean forward in my sanitized plastic chair in conversational excitement, propping my elbows up on tattered stacks of magazines as I forgot all about my fear of the future.
After all, you were no stranger to waiting rooms.
When my name was finally called, misspronounced as usual, I thanked you for making me feel better and said I hoped we would meet again some day. You smiled, eyes fixed on a place a few chairs over from me.
When I finally got out of my appointment, though, you were already gone.
I found a little scrap of paper with a phone number waiting on my seat, bearing the wobbly words, “Call me.”
I think that maybe I will.
When I think medical, I do not associate it with writing! I associate it with sterile doctors offices and hospitals that smell like sick people. I’d rather write about something other than medical! On the other hand, it does make me think of being a new mom. I love that thought. It gives medical a whole new perspective!
“It’s a medical thing.”
She stared at him. “That’s all you have to say? After all of this time? After what we’ve been through together?”
“Together?” He mocked. “Don’t give me all that rot. You sound like some whiny housewife right out of a television drama.”
“At least I’m not trying to be a self-centered pyscho-”
“CUT!” The director yelled. He rubbed his forehead. “Lucy, Dan, I know you two have been getting along now, but the fight scenes are scripted for a reason. You have to repeat the actual words with feeling, not water it down for–oh never mind.”
The actor and actress in question were already across the set in each others’ arms.
“Medical thing?” The director repeated. He rubbed his face.
“Medical?” Serena asked, her usually light tone full of anger. “You think I can do something medical? I’m a healer, it’s my gift, but I never went to med school, I never wanted to be a doctor, and you think that I can magically do something medical WITHOUT MAGIC?! Tell me, Drake, can you make that refrigerator lift without touching it without your telekinesis? Gwen, can you disappear now, when your power doesn’t work? And Leo, can you levitate without any magic? Hm? Just because regular humans can do what I do doesn’t mean I can do what they can do!”
Leo stepped forward, placing a hand on his girlfriend’s shoulder. “Serena, sweetie, we’re sorry.”
Serena blinked. “No, I’m sorry,” she said, the anger gone from her voice. “I shouldn’t have yelled.”
The medical profession is weird. They make a lot of money and wear funny clothes. I wonder how many people are actually in it because they truly want to help people that are sick… walk them through the process of getting better.
here’s something i bet you didn’t know:
friendships rot as surely as corpses
a slow decay, one without dewdrops on roses
eroding with the passage of time;
as a wind carves a sheer cliff in a canyon
her lips curved in a mirthless smile
and as she turned away from me,
someone i loved became only
a memory.
with surgical precision she penned her first and last name in the upper right hand corner of the application. She was so nervous she felt like she might even screw that up. nothing had ever seemed more out of her reach in her whole life. she sat at the glass table in the white walled room, on top of the white fur throw rug that covered the white floors, her in a bright green dress with her most delicate fake gold accessories, but in the silence she could feel them weighing down her ears and neck.
I’m in the medical field. It’s scientific, but also spiritual. It needs to be both for people to heal. I can give medicines and I can listen. I can dress a wound and I can allow expression of feelings.
Many people in my family have been in the medical industry. I wonder if I will follow in their footsteps. I want to find myself and discover my true calling in my life and career. I don’t want anyone else to choose for me, I want to choose myself, but I also want to be sure.
medical is sounding like such a boring word right now . there is so much money in the medical field. i think that there should be much more focus on health building and promoting health then fixing problesm..like more strenght training so taht there will not be so much ow im hurt fix me blubber jubber ahhhhk!
I have family in the medical industry. I always thought I would be too. It is interesting and I enjoy it, but is that really what I’m meant to do in my life? I keep questioning it and I wish I could know what my calling really is.
would a heartbreak be considered a medical condition? if so, i’m going under cardiac arrest. oh god, save me. my heart is bursting at the seams. it’s been broken and bleeding for too long. i must not suffer much longer. i…i’m…i…don’t know if i…i…can…hold on…..______
There was something pulsingly cool about the room. It wreaked of chrome and an edge of health. There were surgeons needles and strange instruments on the tray beside my bed and I could feel a choking pain rising up in me. There was nothing to do but pray that the women walking around in their seafoam green nurses uniform were as kind as children’s stories would lead me to believe.
Medical school.
Medical help.
That was… that was the plan, wasn’t it?
I wanted to learn how to help people, to fix them, to figure out what was wrong and what can be done about it. I wanted to… to heal people. I didn’t want whatever it was I’m doing now.
This wasn’t, I don’t even know what this was.
I looked back at the bloodstained table and felt bile rise in my throat.
Sometimes, I didn’t know what I was anymore.
medical.
medicine.
mediocre.
medjugore.
meddle.
medusula.
medic.
me.
A clever way of going broke without any choice. Or a way of making vast sums of money on a basic human right which in theory should be free to all and sundry.
Yikes I hardly know where to sart on this one. Physical? Insurance? Is he reason for all of this medical? Good one!
The sterile metal instruments reflected the harsh glare of an sickly, overhead fluorescent light. A distinct scent of lysol hung in the air, and the sheets smelled of thinly veiled mildew.
Meditating on the medieval medicals, Machiavellian doctors made magic.
I’d break into the medical lab with my art student buddies, and we’d rearrange all the equipment: stethoscopes and AEDs, the heart rate monitor comes apart pretty damn easily, and it’s always fun to see how many different bones have been knocked loose on the skeleton this week. We used to revamp the layout to confuse the students, and then escape, leaving finger-painted messages behind, changing the painfully white lab coats into tye-dyed artifacts that med students never, ever wore.
I’ve been to so many hospitals over the year. They’re so bland and clinical, I just find them off. The perfect hospital would have a lot of light, fresh air and colour.
I’m sure it’d cure some patients.
I hate going to the doctor or anything like that. Oh, I especially dislike going to hospitals because they’re so depressing and it just ruins your mood. To think of all the people that are suffering due to their health issues. It’s just sad.
His paws dangling, just a lifeless body in my arms. His time was over. It was time for him to sleep. His medical condition couldn’t last no longer, he couldn’t last no longer. From puppyhood to adulthood. I loved him from the start he gave me those puppy eyes. Vulnerable and precious.
The US medical industry is incredibly fucked up. Doctors are taught how to treat symptoms more so than curing the cause of symptoms. With what? Pillspillspillspillspills…..we are a society of pill poppers, never paying attention to the true cause and fighting back with nature and the millennia of genetics that allow our bodies to heal naturally.
He stood outside the door of the medical plaza, staring at the crumbling, faded plaster and the torn scraps of posters and advertisements that had once lined the walls. He clutched his left arm to his chest, wincing as a fresh stab of pain lanced from his fingertips to his shoulder. A car horn blared down the street, the sound bouncing off the ramshackle buildings lining the block.
This place didn’t look promising at all. He tried to flex his fingers, still attempting to convince himself he wasn’t hurt that badly. Another flare of pain made him grit his teeth.
He sighed. There was nothing for it then. With a deep breath, he reached his good hand out and grasped the oily, dirty door handle.
‘You need medical assistance?’ The fireman asked gesturing towards the ambulance where the others were crowded around. I shook my head.
‘I think that I’m fine,’ I answered. My throat felt sore from the exposure to the smoke but I definetly didn’t want to have to face the others just yet.
It is the cold steel tongs and the white lab coats. It is the scalpels that cut and the thread that mends. It is the sterile place that transforms complex human experiences in to short mathematical calculations of diagnosis and prognosis. It is the club that only accepts one type of verdict, and that is their own. It is also the thing that I will thank god when they mend me up from injury and curse when they treat me like an annoyance to their busy schedule.
I won’t make a big deal of this, like anyone else would when they say they need medical attention. My pulse rate elevating and my breathing slowing, slowing. My vision blurs then clarifies and focuses solely on you. Help me regain my normal state of living without the sudden charming attacks that keep me frozen in place and in mind.
I have a medical problem. I’m me.
I’m lazy. I’m bored. I’m boring.
Help me doc. What do I take to get over this? How do I spur some excitement?
How do I get over this funk of being me to get to the root of the problem and become the top version of myself I know I am?
pale blue walls. White linoleum floors. She liked walking in circles around the hallway of floor 15 door 6. She could pretend she was alone, lost in her own thoughts, the echoing of naked feet her only companion. As often as breath, she would remind herself of the necessity of getting used to her new surroundings–Cloverdale Hospital.
Doctors. Too often in my lifetime. When I was young I was in the hospital a lot. I broke a lot of bones. SO many that I became friends with the X-ray technicians, and they thought my mom was beating me. Poor woman. She had to defend herself against them, and have them call the school. It wasn’t until I was 15 that I was diagnosed wi
I’ve had far too much association with hospitals and therapy and medical plans and shit, for someone who is sane and healthy and grand.
tiresome. it was so tiresome. cleaning out those bedpans and sitting on the floor waiting for the other doctors and orderlies to give her orders. she wanted a moment to wash her face, maybe even swipe on a little bit of black mascara, but that was even too much. every free moment she had, she’d use on a box of apple juice, complete with a straw. that was all.
of all the office buildings on the block, a shabby medical clinic caught my eye. huddled around the door were three young guys, watching an older man rant at cars as they passed.
it felt as though someone had stabbed her.
there should have been blood pouring from her heart like the tears from her eyes
her family should have found her and called a doctor
they should have felt her pain and cried with her
there should have been a deep wound in her skin
there should have been a scar
there should have been…
but there wasn’t
so she sat there, clutching at her broken heart,
and trying to keep it from falling out of her chest and onto the floor
where it would cease to beat and die
where she should die with it, alone
she should…
but she wouldn’t
she had to stay strong and hide her pain
This isn’t the time to talk medical with Grandpa in the hospital, lying in the same bed Grandma was in a year ago. Before she died. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t live without her now. That is not a medical problem.
She took medical studies, always thought of it as an interesting thing. Never really expected, to have so much useless stuff, chemical reactions, and names which are hard enough to make a knot from your tongue. But still, she was happy with her choice. It was a good decision.
They stared at him as he lay on the cold slab. Two heart beats registered on the monitor. Dr. Michael stood poised with the scalpel. He sliced through the rough skin of the alien ignoring his piercing screams. No longer would it remain a medical mystery to them.