Published in The Intima, Fall 2021
I watch the sun descend from the hallway of the ICU, again covering the unit for the night. Ventilators whoosh while filling injured lungs, monitors chime in varied rhythms. Papers shuffle, doors open, printers buzz. Among all the noise, there is one striking absence: patient conversation. It’s a service of endotracheal tubes, of central lines, of soft restraints. Faces without voices.
“Open your eyes,” I say to them. “Wiggle your toes. Squeeze my fingers.” Give me something. Anything.
My peers have left one by one, handing me a growing list of patients. I collect their portable phones and pagers, and clip them to my waist. They weigh my scrubs down like a pine bearing snow. I tie the drawstrings tighter.
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