---

A Student of Medicine Gets Religion

My parents joined a church the first year
I was in high school;
They took me that Easter
and the pastor's son in his beige suit
cornered me at a tea and explained to me
how horrible it was to be crucified.
The weight of your hanging body
as it crushes your ribs together
being, he said, the real cause of death.
Not the nails, or the calvary sun, or hunger:
Though all these things hurt Jesus as well.
As someone who wants to be a doctor, you ought
to know, he said, that there's
no worse way to die.
1'he words gleamed between us,
I thought: do we still crucify people these days?
I remember, on seeing him: pulling carts with
severed limbs on them past the waiting room,
and the lady with the seizure who'd stabbed her
boy-friend. In the E.R. he lay two cots away, giggling.
The Pastor's son lifted his blond head
from his tea cup, said:
Praise the Lord he died, so we needn't suffer.

Christine Yasuko Todd
School of Medicine, 1993
Southern Illinois University

---

On Going To The Hospital, In Winter

oh, when things come together.
When the cold river meets the colder yet air
Steam rises like a visible perfume,
Easy on the eye, fragrant to the touch.


Oh, when things come together.
When the younger hand softly strokes and
Soothes the wintery white foreheads
Of the older yet men and women resting
In wait on their beds, hearts warm.


Yes, when things come together,
As all things do, there is more than
Me or You, or things.
There is this coming together
That is new, that is
Life rising toward the sun.

Daniel Boyle, M.P.H.
Graduate Assistant
Department of Medical Social Work
University of Illinois at Chicago

---

Throwing up snow peas

                                Bright white lights— they 
                                 Burn into my eyes.  WherE 
                                 Is my god? did     someone 
                                 Hide him again? motion 
                                 Motion all around       mE 
                                  The world spins much 
                                  Too fast. icy sweat 
                               Coats                my 
                            Body                staring 
                           Eyes                poke mY 
                         Mind                 harmonic 
                       Motion              keeps mE 
                        Afloat           yet alas! 
                         Shimmering in the distance 
                           A soft white porcelain 
                            Summons my presence 
                            And i finally arrive 
                           Just opening my mouth 
                           Puts me past the gates 
                              Of         heaven 

Jon roquefort citow III
College of Medicine, 1992
University of Illinois at Chicago

---

Five Months in a Box

"Healthy young male of Peruvian origin."
Whitecoat cradles Monkey 3:
once quick spot of yellow on green,
a butterfly net was required to catch him.


"Perhaps a vessel broke— we need to look."
Whitecoat's fingers probe the headpiece,
bolted onto bone,
recording rhythms of brain and blood.


"Don't get soft. He had a good life.'
Whitecoat turns the body over,
sliding scalp down over ears
scraping muscle, nibbling bone.


"Warm cage, good chow, and no predators."
Whitecoat pops brain into palm,
peeling meninges off a core
of memory and emotion.


"Nobody's fault. We learn from our mistakes."
Whitecoat's fingers pressing
on latent images of jungle orchids,
clicking beetles, spreading sunsets.


"He gave good data, too bad we lost him."
Whitecoat bags the body,
stiff evidence of five months in a box
telling deaf Science of loneliness and boredom.

Jim Black
Medical Scholars Program
University of Illinois—Urbana-Chapaign

---

Hungry for Love

I can hear you down the hall
through locked doors and barred windows:
"Home, home, I wanna go home!"
A sheltered home, it's your sixth.
Each one a little bead of comfort
Strung along thirty dim years.


You and I draw pictures together:
mother father sisters in a pink house,
a big warm bed, a sister's room
a dog, a parrot, and some rabbits,
taking a bath, riding a wagon.


You let the rabbits out once; they never came back.
Weeping, you whisper they have no home.
You ran away once, you were afraid.
Father drove fast, he would not speak.
You lost your family and found a new home.


We talk about babies— you like them a lot.
Their stolen photos are stuffed in your purse.
Your sister's babies, they are so happy!
On the floor of your room, a picture beside you,
you caress your belly and dream about babies.


We talk about food—you hate it, hate it!
Food makes you fat, and fat is ugly,
ugly is dirty, and people won't like you.
Carrots and lettuce get a few nibbles,
the rest of your tray ends up on the floor.


Your body betrays you, tortured by hunger.
The nurses are pleased that you wolf it all down,
then angry to find it stopping the toilet.
You purge your thin body with soap and perfume.


I do a physical— you pretend sleep.
A nurse helps expose you: a mannequin curled up,
a skinny twelve-year-old, a form with no scars.
Is that why your body has no history written upon it?
How did you end up looking like your self-portrait.
stick limbs, soft belly, and crooked face?


We talk about secrets— you run and hide.
In the corner with crayons and small words,
you tell me that you are fat,
babies make you fat,
you stop.


Do you have a boy-friend? No answer.
We silently draw more pictures.
You mumble that you hold hands with him,
that you watch TV and share popcorn,
that you take baths together ...
he loves me, loves me, loves me.


* * *

Now the case can be summarized:

She was hungry for lost love,
Found it in her sheltered home,
Loves this man for hugs and sex,
Wants the baby that love brings,
Fears adulthood that comes with It,
Hates the swollen breasts and belly,
Starves the body back to child shape,
Begs for love and cries for home.


(But these are not the words I wrote
into her lengthy discharge note.)

Jim Black
Medical Scholars Program
University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign
First Place Winner

---

Empty Arms

A child's absence brings grief despite the many times that such loss
has been encountered.
Each time tragic moments are brought back of the children
that have passed before from arms that held them with love
to a bitter end.
So great is the loss of each child cared for even if one is only his
nurse.


As I care for these children they make an impression that never fades.
The love shared between us gives purpose to what could be without it
being just another way of making a living.
The relationships built over time are missed greatly.


One finds oneself longing to hold this child again.
Reaching out finding only that he is no longer there to hold.
One is often tempted to protect oneself from such an unfulfilled
longing again.
In his room, however, awaits another precious child for one's care.
This child fills his own unique way one's empty arms and one finds
himself reaching out once again.

Sheryl Wiegand, R.N.
St. Louis Children's Hospital

---

Outriggers

June checked her face in the rear view mirror to make sure that she'd rubbed enough makeup base on the gray crescents under her eyes. She even wished this parent-teacher conference would be like the previous ones — lukewarm coffee in styrofoam cups and quickly fired questions about Douglas that always included terms like assimilation anxiety and interfacing. From what Ms. Tilley said over the phone, though, June knew that this afternoon's conference would probably require more of her than just biting the rim of her styrofoam cup, and staring down at it to see if her lipstick prints matched up. June wasn't sure what her quiet son could have done on a class field trip to the fire station, but Ms. Tilley, his second grade teacher, had said that she'd phoned out of "concern" and had "relevant questions" to ask about Douglas. June stroked the jagged edge of the car key with her thumb. Douglas had been unusually excited about the field trip. Maybe the blinking or the hand quirks had flared up again.

She shoved the key into the ignition, turned it and listened for a moment as the engine's rumbling momentum gradually strengthened. Backing slowly out of the driveway, she repeatedly checked in both the rear view mirror and the extra, side view mirror that Edward had insisted on installing on the right-hand side of the car. Even though June knew that Douglas was inside the house with a sitter, probably engrossed in his books with detailed pictures of trucks and aircrafts, she was inexplicably terrified that he would dart out behind the station wagon.

Driving down the elm tree-arched route to the elementary school, she could almost hear the seemingly calm, tolerant voice of Ms. Tilley. Like her, Douglas's past teachers had called him an "apathetic learner" and "quirky," but June knew that they were just euphemisms ... obtuse euphemisms.

"Dougie's manual dexterity is poor — his handwriting is jerky, and his artwork tends to be sloppy." Ms. Tilley's brown tinted glasses seemed to lighten up and almost shine, so much that June could clearly see her own reflection. "His speech is somewhat slurred and slow," Ms. Tilley continued, "that is, on the few occasions that he does speak. And he Is just not capable of enunciating." She stressed "nun" so that her small teeth gleamed between her pink, glazed lips.

Ms. Tilley didn't, however, address the fact that Douglas had scored the highest in the class on the reading and math aptitude tests. June only knew this because she had gone to the school office and insisted on reading his file, even though Edward tried to dissuade her. "We know he's okay," Edward had told her that day, as she fished around in her purse for her car keys. "Why are you so hell-bent on seeing proof?"

June was convinced that the test scores wouldn't mean anything to Ms. Tilley and Douglas's other teachers — they would probably just attribute them to a fluke. Still, June had needed to see the scores that day in the school office. She read the file over three times and she slowly stored the typewritten ninety-eight and ninety-seven percentages in her mind. Later, she would mentally call them up to deflect the notes of slow progress sent home about Douglas, and the confused stares she received from parents whose children were lively and rambunctious. This afternoon's conference would be harder than glossing over a note or ignoring a stare, but June mentally clutched these percentiles.

She pressed down harder with her loafer on the gas pedal, but then quickly let up. Accelerating was pointless — for some reason, she had left the house at 3:15, even though the conference wasn't until 4:00. Now, June thought, if she arrived early at the school, she would just sit out in the parking lot, repeatedly glancing in the rear view mirror to see if she appeared nervous. "Just stay cool," Edward always advised her, but already June could feel the collar of her turtleneck becoming heavier and hotter around her neck.

She knew what could happen next. Douglas might be labeled "educably mentally handicapped" or "EMH," an acronym which had once made June laugh when she went to buy Edward a monogrammed sweater. It was shortly after they were married, and she'd been almost obsessed with the fact that she was Mrs. Edward Mark Holt. The family name originally was Holtellini, as Edward once confided. It hadn't seemed odd to June at the time, but now whenever she signed her name, she found herself thinking that she had somehow been severed from a rich ethnic legacy, and confined to a monosyllabic stump.

With a small jolt, she realized that she had nearly missed pulling into the left-turn lane on the street in front of the school. The car's left-turn signal arm was broken, so she had to jerk it manually up and down, as she maneuvered the car into the left lane. As usual, the light was red, and was likely to stay that way for several minutes, judging from her past experiences. The "left-interminable lane," she used to refer to it, laughing, the first few times she went to visit Douglas's new school.

Staring at the red light, she remembered buying Edward the "EMH" sweater, in his favorite color of fire engine red. She was amused by its irony — Edward had received advanced degrees in bioengineering, and was then starting to work toward a medical degree. He was interested in specializing in neurology.

June never understood how he could have abandoned it. Edward's grades were excellent, as always, when six months after Douglas was born, he abruptly dropped out of medical school and began to work as a statistician and researcher. "I'll finally be supporting us now," he said.

Somehow, the light was still red. Maybe it had hypnotized her into dwelling on certain experiences she would rather not consider, like the sudden changes in Edward's behavior after he dropped out of med school. Almost i mediately he had become moody and aloof. June was hurt the most, though, by his refusal to discuss it all with her, even when they lay in bed together during the early hours of the morning, both of them too exhausted even to sleep by the baby's shrieks and continual restlessness. The only ways in which Edward didn't seem to change were physical, and they were even more disconcerting to June than before he left med school. Periodically, he still made little nervous movements, as he called them — twitches and jerks of his head, and a shrugging of his thin shoulders. He had always possessed the odd movements, at least as long as June had known him, although they tended to "wax and wane," as he put it. She had become used to them, but Edward always seemed embarrassed by them, especially out in public. Invariably, he would offer quick explanations. If they occurred during the day, he attributed them to nerves, but if they happened at night, he explained that they were just muscle spasms prior to falling asleep. Like the "myoclonic jerk," he said. Although June never doubted his intellect, she began to wonder about the brevity and terseness of his explanations.

The insistent honking of cars behind her punctured June's thoughts. Looking over at the stoplight, she was relieved to see that it was green, and mercifully not yet yellow. Probably a "stale" green. though, as Edward would refer to it. In a tight, quick half-circle, she turned into the schools winding driveway that led to the parking lot. She swung the car into the cramped parking lot. Glancing at the dashboard clock, she was surprised to see that it was only shortly past 3:20. As she began to drive slowly around the rectangular perimeter of parked cars, she saw a woman about her age emerge from the school. She was wearing a linen suit (June wondered if she ironed it, herself), her hair was sleek and styled, and her makeup, as far as June could see from the car, was as smooth as if she had just applied it. Could she be a mother of one of the students? June craned her neck to check her own face in the rear view mirror again. There was a gray smudge underneath one of her eyes. She took her right hand off the steering wheel to rub under her eye with her index finger, but it only looked darker. Staring at her face, she couldn't decide which was darker — the iris of her right eye, or the smudge underneath it.

She thought of Edward, who for the past year, wouldn't even look her straight In the eye anymore. Whenever he was literally faced with looking at her, he seemed nearly unable to focus on anything at all — the pupils of his green eyes would become larger and almost wet-looking, reminding June of the yolk in an egg fried sunny-side-up, after It has been punctured by a fork. It was such a contrast to the way in which he used to gaze directly at her, his eyes addressing her so intently that often she could even discern the rims of his clear contact lenses.

Ironically, it was through the eyes that she had really been sure about Douglas's intelligence. After he was born, she looked into his hazel eyes for the first time and was convinced that they contained a unique understanding. "Old eyes," she called them privately. At first, she had thought that she was just an unusually prejudiced, doting mother. Soon, though, Douglas's eyes convinced her even further. They always seemed to be observing and examining completely his surroundings. When he was a baby, he rarely slept — instead, he would lie quietly on his back, with his gaze fixed on the bright, geometric shapes that hung from the mobile that Edward had installed over his crib. Whenever she set him down in a room with her, his eyes never ceased following her. She would be reading in the corner of the room farthest from him, but every time she looked up, he would be staring straight at her. The only time he ever averted his gaze, curiously enough, was when she held him up to look in the mirror. His hazel eyes would quickly look down, and she would be left with the reflection of herself.

A car honked behind her. Startled, June pressed down on the gas pedal and the station wagon lurched forward. The car behind her passed, and June resumed her creeping pace. Her foot was barely touching the accelerator now, but still it was beginning to cramp up. She wondered if she'd been driving too long that afternoon, or if she was just getting older and her body didn't respond as well to pressure anymore.

Douglas's muscle spasms had started when he was six months old. One night, June heard a screeching cry come from his room. She rushed in to find him twisting about in his crib, his thin arms flailing and his eyes blinking rapidly. Watching his bewildered eyes as his body contorted, she felt desperate, and she'd run, yelling, into the bedroom where Edward was still asleep. Incredibly to June, Edward was only vaguely alarmed. He calmly suggested that they take him to the emergency room, although he said that he doubted they could "do much about it."

The muscle jerks, or tics weren't exactly seizures, the doctors had said, after the extensive brain scans were negative. They suggested that Douglas would probably "outgrow them, in due time."

The dashboard clock read 3:45. As June drove around the end of another parking aisle, she felt as though the back end of the car were purposely lagging behind, tugging on her to slow down even more.

Douglas's muscle spasms had gradually progressed into intermittent, quick movement of his face, neck and hands. Again the doctors were mystified by the nervous tics, as they referred to them. The first time that June heard the term "tic," she thought of a small black, squirming bug trapped In a circle of clear fluid that was imbedded in somebody's skin.

Douglas's physical development was slow, but mentally he had proven his intelligence early to June. When he was barely four years old, he learned how to read. His teachers, though, didn't realize his intelligence, because his mumbled speech and jerky movements made it a struggle for him to communicate. June tried to explain this to the teachers, but they mostly smiled and suggested remedial special education courses to her. June had wished that the teachers could see Douglas at home with the books and balsa wood models that Edward bought for him. He spent long periods of time reading about the mechanical details of cars, trucks and airplanes. If he was still puzzled by something, he would ask Edward, who never actually joined in his son's activities, but remained in the room with him, standing several feet away. With his back turned on Douglas, he answered the questions and gazed out the room's bay window. Sometimes they just remained together in complete silence for hours.

June rarely intruded upon the scene, but sometimes she stood outside the doorway, pausing on her way to the laundry room. She remembered the most recent time she'd done this, several weeks before. Douglas was bent over the fire engine, his favorite model. Without even looking up, he asked Edward in his slightly mumbled voice, "What are outriggers?" June could still remember how, without even turning around, Edward carefully answered, "They're steel projections that extend out from the fire engine and support it..especially when all of the truck's ladders and hoses are being used to put out a fire. it all puts a strain, you know, on the truck."

Check the time, June reminded herself. 3:52 — she really should find a space. Edward would have parked long ago. Predictable, reliable Edward. June paused in front of an empty space up near the front entrance of the school, but then sped by it, remembering how Edward always circled a parking lot, even if there were other open spaces just a short distance away.

Whenever she looked to Edward to reassure or encourage her, he would just shake his head, the pink vein on his forehead bulging and darkening so that it almost matched the bright red tie he often wore. June was often tempted to sever them both.

3:59. The tightness in her chest increasing, she finally decided upon a space closer to the center of the lot. She tried to quickly maneuver the car straight in between the two, bright yellow guidelines. Once she parked, though, she knew instinctively that she had surpassed the right line. She guessed this without even checking in the right-hand side view mirror.

Carefully she began to back out of the space, checking in both the rear and side view mirrors. When the car was halfway out, though, she paused, and glanced at the clock. She really wasn't surprised to see that it was three minutes past 4:00. She had known that she would never arrive exactly at four.

June would experience this same sort of surprise several times in the future: in 10 years, when an "experimental" neurologist would diagnose Douglas as suffering from Tourette's Syndrome, a neurological disorder which promoted "uncontrollable tics," and shortly afterward, Douglas would become a National Merit Scholar; in the same year, when Edward would announce that he might return to medical school; and finally in the nearer future — several minutes later, in fact — when Ms. Tilley would ask June to satisfy her "curiosity" about how Dougie had known to ask such a question of the fire chief, who'd been so impressed. "Who," Ms. Tilley's glasses would seem to darken, "made him familiar with outriggers?"

Carolyn Alessio, EMT
Graduate student, M.F.A.
Indiana University
Third Place Winner

---

Empty Cradle

So you thought you explained the procedure
So careful to use words I understood
So you hurriedly took down my history
lightning glances averting my eyes
I stared at you
but did not hear your voice


So you thought I would not notice the icy
distaste in your eyes
As they hesitantly reached to grip mine
Cold steel grey
So precisely cutting with unseeing slices
So carelessly grazing my soul
I saw the disgust in those glistening knives
Relentlessly boring into me


So you thought I would forget the roughness of
your hands
Dry scaly skin against my thighs
So you spread my legs in the stirrups
Not noticing the anesthesia had yet to
drag me down
Into an emptiness so vast
Where cradles sit vacant
And rattles lie silent
So I scream into a chilling quiet
to drown out the absence of a baby's cry
So I try to grab with paralyzed arms
to stop the bloody stream
I awake shivering in a grey mist


"It is done" you say
It is dead — echoes the sterile room
I turn my back to you
So I might not have to see
Your departing silhouette blacken the door
Drawing my knees to my chest
Wrapping my arms around myself
I let the grey cold surround me.

Julie Pease
College of Medicine, 1991
University of Illinois at Chicago

---

Heidi

Your scalp, a Sahara,
windswept and dry,
barren of the flame-red foliage,
which once was you.


Your eyes, still seeing
and full of a feeling:
forlorn.
But hoping.
Without hope.


Though now no more;
your agony ended.
I weep not only for your long suffering,
but for the loss of a friend.
A good friend.
Without hope.

Walter Wm. Dalitsch III
College of Medicine, 1992
University of Illinois at Chicago

---

The Doorway

Subconscious:
in an unknown world,
existing beyond a threshold
I once dared not to cross.


Perceptions
have no effect;
none,
but to be unperceived.


I float,
but do not sense
a change in movement.
Even black
is not completely black.


A hazy shade of gray,
and flitting memories,
is what I feel,
through eyesearsnosetongueandskin;
I know not which.


But in a perceptionless state,
where do I get these images ...


Can the subconsious be
beyond the entrance
to relive memory?

Walter Wm. Dalitsch III
College of Medicine, 1992
University of Illinois at Chicago

---

The Patient is Calling for Her Mother

The patient is calling for her mother.
Her chart indicates: tachycardia, febrile, 103
years old ... Her chart, our chart of her
progress, says nothing about the way
her body has shrunken and curled upon the bed,
a question mark.
Well enough I know this march —
the steps all feet will tread,
the linear decay of the body.
How can the mind then circle back,
dare to break these somber ranks,
flying back, like Atlanta for the Golden Apples.
too late. She finds only me
in my white coat —
I am not her mother.
(Will my children call backward to me?)
Not her mother,
I hold the downy head in my hands.

Molly Finnerty
Medical Science Training Program
College of Medicine, 1993
University of Illinois at Chicago

---

My Aunt Before She Died

One had the impression she was traveling down a long corridor
Looking for someone or something,
Opening doors,
Reacting,
Slamming doors,
Moving on to the next one.


I remember a name she kept calling everyone, "Star"
Everyone was Star
And in moments of fear or confusion when led down the wrong
corridor, she would shout, "Star I am pleading with you listen to me."


And then there were those days when the door was kind and opened to
a cheery room where familiar faces from bygone days sat around sipping tea.
Auntie would sit and gossip with everyone,
Naughty little things she would say.
She would ask for a cigarette when one was already lit in her other hand.
We would have to remind her that she hadn't finished that one yet.
That's when Star came and her wrinkled brow would set in defiance.


I remember the peaceful rooms she entered when remembrance was
the sound of a voice or the touch of a hand.
Those were becoming rare.


Toward the end she remembered her children and her mother,
Everyone else were shadows in that dark corridor
As she opened the final door,
the one with her name inlaid on a star.

Feiruz Shehadi, M.A.
Admissions and Records, Officer III
Architecture, Art, and Urban Planning
University of Illinois at Chicago
Second Place Winner

---

Dementia #2

Mostly I see hostility
raw reflexive exploding
among these people here
who have lost
chunks of themselves
to time


Or else
an emptiness mixed with perpetual puzzlement
as context is missing
as each moment is forgotten
as the next one arrives


She walked the halls
looking as lost
as the rest


I watched as she stopped
by my patient
posied
disheveled
sheet cover in disarray


She bent over and I recognized
that look in her eyes
as she picked up the sheet
spread it across her lap
and tucked her in
with strong gentle movements
like she must have done for children
now old themselves
and then she walked on


I followed, intrigued
found her name
checked the chart
oriented to self only it said,
another medical misreading

Daniel J. Brauner, M.D.
Department of Medicine
College of Medicine
University of Illinois at Chicago

---

Prayer #2

With such scorn
and fury it comes


Decimating us post-war modernists


We living here near bliss
forced to change ways,
alter mode


commence to toe


the line
back


to first organic soup
survival fit
imperatives
Forgotten not erased


To think that woven so tightly
in the creation
lay
our unwitting perturbation

Daniel J. Brauner, M.D.
Dearment of Medicine
College of Medicine
University of Illinois at Chicago

---

Beware

Phantom killer glides along on silent wings,
As moans of pleasure turn to cries of pain,
What armor wears the faceless one,
That allow to pass so sight unseen?


Congenial host so eagerly carries out
This sentence decreed by ignorance.
Refuge afforded by thin, slick veil
So easily ignored in heated haste.


Animal rules usurp the reign of thinking man's prize.
Down we stoop to lie with the others,
Out of control,
On glandular prowl.


Pray arise, great race, above thy distant cousins
Choosing life, judicious love over sweet suicide.
For among us now stalks life's great waster,
Unseen and unseeing, final and cold.


Beware the wanderer, know and guard his roads.
Choose wisely to stand tall, no return to the tress
Where blistering sun beats on festering flies and
Love is reduced to a compulsive pounding of meat.

Scott C. Lloyd
Graduate Student
School of Public Health
University of Illinois at Chicago

---

Diary of a Medical Student

Entry: Feb 13, 1989
"Who wants him?" asked our chief resident, Steve. "He's a G.I. consult on the pulmonary service." "Ugh!" I thought, we each already had too many patients. I couldn't keep their faces straight as it was. All I needed was another patient who would probably never go to surgery—dead weight. It was my turn, so instead of waiting to be asked I volunteered. "His name is Birman," said Steve, "room 4260, I think he goes by John." Oh great, not only a new patient but an ICU patient to boot. Steve had left the room number out of the discussion knowing it would give away the patient's critical status. He watched my reaction. I smiled as if I didn't notice. A unit patient would take twice the time and add twenty minutes to my pre-rounds. I was already getting there at 4:30 a.m. As an afterthought, Steve said, "I think he's got histo." Histoplasmosis? I had never seen a patient with histo. At least I might learn something, but who was I kidding? I never got time to read anyway. Rounds were over for that evening. It was 7:30 p.m. I had a couple of notes to write. I would see him for the first time the next morning.

Entry: Feb. 14, 1989
The following morning, as I drove to the hospital, my thoughts drifted to John. I would need to spend some time on him. The rest of my patients were familiar. As I got to the ICU I grabbed John's chart and began to peruse it. To my surprise, John was only 26. He'd had a history of gastric ulcer but in the last month his hemoglobin had dropped dangerously low indicating the possibility that it was rebleeding. An endoscopic examination with brushings and biopsy revealed a benign single gastric ulcer on the posterior aspect of the lesser curvature of his stomach. Still, "rule out Gastric Cancer" was my first thought after being on general surgery for a month. It was also one of the few tidbits I knew as a third year medical student. John was here to be treated for histoplasmosis. His ulcer had been fine until a few days ago when a routine blood count had revealed low hemoglobin. A positive stool hemoccult test suggested some sort of gastrointestinal bleed. That's why they called us. John would need another scope and biopsy. As I walked into his room to listen to his lungs and heart, I noticed several magazines on hunting and fishing. I would remember that for later as a topic of conversation. John woke up as I flicked on the corner light which put out a dim light. He seemed confused as I introduced myself. As I listened to his heart, he knew the routine well and didn't speak, he just closed his eyes pulling a pillow over his face. When I finished he was more awake and began to ask me some questions about medical school from beneath his pillow. I listened politely for what seemed like an eternity, knowing I was way behind my morning pre-round schedule. A glance at my watch told me I was five minutes late for rounds. Thinking about my attending's reactions to my being late spurred me to interrupt and excuse myself, promising to return later to finish our conversation.

After morning surgery and a quick lunch I caught up on some errands and found myself in a strange situation— I had some free time. I looked over my list of names and John's stood out. I usually did not spend my extra time with consults but this one was interesting. Because I had spent so much time with the chart and so little time with the patient when I got to the room I didn't recognize him from morning rounds, although he acknowledged me immediately. His face looked so much younger and alert than it did this morning. Luckily, his reaction told me I had the correct room. A woman, perhaps in her 50s, greeted me with a smile as I walked in. By her expression, I sensed she had heard about me from my rounds this morning and was expecting me. She was John's mother. Now I was glad I decided to return. I recalled his magazines and said, "The nurses tell me you're quite the outdoorsman." John smiled and spoke about deer hunting in Wisconsin near his parents' farm. Our conversation drifted from college to hunting and from careers to his hospitalization. John asked me, with a concerned expression, how much longer I thought he would be in the hospital. His hematocrit had been slowly creeping up and his lungs were starting to respond to the drug amphotericin. If he kept improving he could probably leave at the end of his ten-day course of amphotericin provided his ulcer did not rebleed thus lowering his hemoglobin. John knew it was day five of amphotericin course, which meant he still had at least five days. As I left, John asked, "Could I have gotten the histoplasmosis while in a cave?" "It's possible," I answered. "It's kind of a strange bug to catch. What were you doing in a cave?" I asked. "Just exploring; it's close to my folk's house," he replied. I glanced at his mom. She seemed uncomfortable with John's answer. As usual, I looked at my watch and realized once again that I was late. They both understood and smiled. I rushed out. As I hurried down the hall, I felt sorry for John. He seemed to need his mother. Although it was apparent that she loved John, there seemed to be a barrier between them, something keeping them apart.

Entry: Feb. 19, 1989
During surgery the days passed quickly but the hours were long and the pace was exhausting, only four weeks until Spring break. After ten weeks on surgery I needed a rest. This would be the first time I had been home in nearly a year. Alaska for spring break was not everybody's idea of a good time but it was perfect for me. As the days passed, I got to know John and his family. His daily routine was simple: I.V. medication twice a day for an hour and Carafate via N.G. tube in the afternoon. I began to realize my visits were important to him. I assumed this was because his day was so monotonous. His mother always greeted me with a friendly smile and appreciated my concern. There still seemed to be a wall between them. Once, I think, his mother began to speak to me about what separated them, but John returned before she got to the crux of her story. At the time I didn't give the incident much thought. John continued to get better during his last days on medication. He had enough energy to walk the hallway several times daily. At this point John was part of my routine and I enjoyed the few minutes I spent with his family every day.

Entry: Feb. 23, 1989
John left the hospital today after his last amphotericin treatment. He promised to take me pheasant hunting that spring if I could find the time. I smiled and nodded, knowing it would be fun, but with my schedule it would be impossible. Though John was leaving, he was not yet out of the woods. His immune system had to continue to fight the histoplasmosis and his ulcer was still a worry. His hematocrit was better but still low. During the next couple of weeks he would have to return for a repeat endoscopy and repeat blood tests. Hopefully that would be the last time. These tests were hounding John and I could see they were beginning to take their toll on him. He could never get the tests over with; there was always another test waiting for him. John seemed unable to gather his strength, something was pulling life out of him.

Entry: Feb. 28, 1989
It was not until a few days after John left that I found out he had AIDS. One of the surgeons mentioned something about his room number and then he said, "It was obvious he was a candy-ass!" He was not aware that I had taken care of John or even knew of him, he was not even talking to me. My legs felt funny and I sat down. I thought John's illness was a gastric cancer or maybe the histo. How could I have been so stupid? It all made sense now: his age, the histoplasmosis, the ulcer, his mother's distance. How could I have missed it in the charts? Was it in the chart? Why hadn't he told me? He was gay, yet he was a friend, someone with whom, if I could find the time, I would go pheasant hunting. I was pissed at the surgeon. As I thought about it, would I have reacted so differently had I know the entire story? I didn't know.

Entry: March 22, 1989
Each day went into the next and my memory of John faded as new faces came to our floor. It wasn't until the day I was leaving for spring break that I heard of him again. My ride was waiting in front of the hospital and I was on my way out the door. As I headed down the main hallway of the hospital a familiar voice called my name and a hand grabbed my shoulder. It was John's father. John's mother was behind him, they both appeared panicked. In a jumble of words they told me that John's ulcer was rebleeding. When he became lethargic at home they brought him to the emergency room. After some tests he had been rushed to the operating room. I went back to the surgical wing of the hospital, changed into scrubs, and found John's O.R. I thought about John's parents. They appeared tired with dark rings under their eyes. They walked as if God was punishing them. As I entered the O.R. one of the surgeons from the service I had just left was doing a total gastrectomy. His only words were, "He's doing as well as could be expected." Then he added, "Surgery is never great." I told John's parents what I had learned. Then I explained my situation. As it was I would barely make my flight. I wished them the best and promised to check on John when I got back.

The ride to the airport the ride was quiet, partially because my friend was peeved because he had waited 45 minutes for me, but more because I was lost in thought about what had just happened. Even if John pulled through the surgery he would be facing one battle after the next until eventualy he died. I regretted that I could not stay. But I needed the rest. I was exhausted both physically and mentally from the long hours and constant pressure to be alert on the surgical clerkship. I needed to gather my own strength. Home was the best place to be.

As my plane taxied away from the O'Hare terminal and I began my journey home, the sun shone brightly through my window. I thought about John and his family at the hospital and how exhausted they were. I wished they were all going home too: John's parents to their farm in Wisconsin and John to go deer hunting nearby, but that was impossible. it would be a long time before John's parents could return to their farm to begin their lives again, and John would continue, for as long as he could, a fight that he could never win.

S. Craig Humphreys
Stritch School of Medicine, 1990
Loyola University

---

Poem

There have been times
when I wondered ...
What was your life like?
What were the things that
made you happiest,
what were the things that
made you cry.


I have learned so much from you
though I must admit I was afraid,
I had never experienced
the coldness of death.


And never saw your face either
I couldn't imagine myself
looking into your lifeless eyes
but, kept my eagerness for anatomy
as we tore your limbs apart


So drifting away in thought
reflecting upon your days
I found myself quivering,
You too had blood once running
through your veins.
But, nothing was more startling
than the nail polish on your hand.

Marisela Dominguez
College of Medicine, 1992
University of Illinois at Chicago

---

We Dove Deep

We dove deep within you. The water was dark and tannic, and although it stung a bit to open our eyes, we could not close them to the treasures that you held. All across the room came the splashing of others who had found their own pool, who were dowsing themselves in this holy, scientific baptism. it wasn't long before the clammy water sponged its way towards numbness. We shivered at the sensation, and recognized it as the price any diver might pay to dive beneath the surface.

Excitement rippled through the air, scattered waves across a pond that had stood for a lifetime. An innocuous beginning, two hills that had slumped to embrace each other, pooling a creek that had wriggled through these southern Illinoisian hills for a century or more. With time, the pool lenghtened; the creek pushed harder and through the years the pond found its form, a shape that caressed the shoreline and the wild grasses lining it. One day a young willow found a seat along the northern bank, curled up his legs under his chin, and dangled his shy, whispy head over the pool. Up the slope to the east of the pond began the rows of corn, whose lime green rise and caramel fall kept chromatic and chronological time for the pond, and for the willow.

Sometime after the field was leveled bare, in the porchlight autumn sun, a child's voice appeared; his garbling and playful glitter slid over the water and ricocheted its way through the branches of the willow, filling what had been empty. More followed in the summer after that, and more later, until eight tiny legs pounded like pistons around the shoreline. They swam in the cradle of the pond and crawled along its banks, told stories in the lap of the willow, and climbed its tall wispy branches to see what, exactly, there was to see. They gave life to the wood and the water, and received it back.

Years passed, and bullrushes sprouted along the slumping eastern bank of the pond. The voices of children bounced off the surrounding hills and returned deeper, stronger, and restless. The nurturing magic of the pond was gone, and even the highest branches of the willow could not reveal all that there was to see. And so the children and their voices drifted and disappeared.

Without them, the pond and the willow set out again to find a life of their own. They watched each other change — her sharp banks, like the stones in the creek, were worn smooth by the water, the endless passing of the water; his branches lost the resiliency that had made them horsewhips and fishing poles in the hands of the children. But the roots of the willow thickened and spread, holding the bank beneath it solid, inching beneath the bottom of the pond where it drew deep breaths of her water.

The ritual passing of the combine and the discer went on for another thirty years. Silt collected on the bottom of the pond, shortening its stature, and dead branches fell from the willow in a slow but steady procession that formed an apron around its knotted trunk. The green came as scheduled that year, but like an unwanted guest, the brown came early and stayed late. Water from the creek slid into the banks hid from the aquivorous sun, while the pond stood captive, withering slowly, definitely. The willow did what he could to shelter the pond, but it was very little; so he sat there, staring at his pond and feeling helpless. He eyed the drydocked banks, wondered where the water went, and if it might ever return.

Winter came and the snow drove its way across the brown stubble of the field, some of it drifting in over the exposed bottom of the pond, sifting into gaping cracks, the arteries that had fed the sun. Spring came; melting snow and the cold February rain washed out the paper bag brown that had littered the countryside. rhe pond found new life in all the wetness, but the willow did not, never awakening from its winter slumber. Sap slept in its roots and neither the pond nor the lengthening day could rouse it. A planter passed by, the field leafed green, and the creek returned from hiding; the pond reclaimed half of its bottom, felt better, and lapped silently at the twisted willow roots that poked their way out of the bank.

Adults returned with children, to show them the place of their childhood. One child scampered down the bank to the muddy, shrunken shoreline, and crouched with arms dangling between his knees. He swirled figure eights with a stick and tossed clusters of mud and rocks into the water, reveled in the waves of his work, repeating the ritual of an earlier generation. But now the waves moved slower and the water grew darker, and without the willow, things would get no brighter. She wondered if she had the strength to witness the passing of another discer, to once again watch the brown of the fields go black.

Sometime before the snow came, you left and your surface went still. Now, we have come to search your bottom, to tap the skeleton of your banks, to swim or wade through whatever remains. Once again, there is life upon your banks. From your death, we will come to understand life; we will come to understand ponds and the willows that arch beside them.

Craig Bowron
School of Medicine, 1992
Southern Illinois University

Author's note: I wrote this piece after our first cadaver lab freshman year when we dove deep into our cadavers—and our careers—with an unbridled (and retrospectively naive) enthusiasm. I wondered about our cadaver, an elderly woman, about her life, and if she could have understood how much life had come from her death.

Reprinted with permission: Aspects, SIU College of Medicine

---

Going Sane

Shredded, wetted, embedded parafin
Neutrosomes and plaster
Speckled brittle human flesh
Real flesh
like raisins in my hair
withering in and from time
I gently comb my cereal
And greet the hope of a bright new
lead-loaded day.
I'm not that far behind really
I am elastic. Finding that my
mean, ME—my original shape


Is spun in the casting bin
Diced to figure all that was
Needed was a will.
Just as simply as those negative pressures
that fill my lungs
really let me breathe,
I will be O.K.
But aren't Dentists supposed
to be a little crazy?

Anonymous
College of Dentistry, 1993
University of Illinois of Chicago

---

Rx: Poetry

A poem helps one to survive
When bad thoughts rule the day.
The flood gates open; sadness writes,
Depression floats away.


The loved ones lost, the many failings,
All the darkest times—
Cut sharp as knives, but don't end lives
When they're retold in rhymes.


For deep emotion is an echo,
Growing faint, but heard
Through fingertips, from dying lips,
And in a poet's word.


A metered line that paints a picture,
Coloring the pain,
Can wash away so many hurts
As gentle as the rain.


And when life seems to be so dark,
The blackness should not hide.
Let words express with great success
The things still trapped inside.


A surgeon, called to stitch the wound,
Can only make it worse.
You'll find a pill to cure the ill
Is in a simple verse.

Mary Bender
College of Medicine, 1992
University of Illinois at Chicago

---

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Now in our sixth edition, Body Electric continues to expand, reaching all corners of Illinois and encompassing every facet of medicine. Humanistic, social and moral issues are all addressed between these covers in the guise of a white cloaked form. And so Body Electric as a literary magazine in a medical community has demonstrated once again that humanity is at the core of all medicine.

The success of Body Electric would not be possible without the talent, long hours and organizational abilities of Suzanne Poirier, PhD. I must also thank Hyman Muslin, MD, at the Department of Psychiatry, for being our final judge in the entry contest. And a special thanks to our diligent typist, Bernice Coleman.

Julie Pease

Editor:	JULIE PEASE College of Medicine '92
Advisor:	SUZANNE POIRIER, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Literature and Medicine
Design:	BILL MAYER Office of Publications Services