BY GABRIELLE HURLEY
DROPLET PRECAUTIONS I don’t know what provides me with more agency in a situation where every body is exposed to microscopic hijackers I have spent so much time begging for the world to stop and now it has, except for here asking for the ER to so much as slow down is like asking the tides to cease a request all the more impossible in the midst of a pandemic so we come to work while the world remains trapped inside prisoners in their homes while we aid prisoners in their bodies everyone else locked away in an effort to stem the flow of coughs and gasps streaming into our waiting room and I am happy to have an active role yet I stand in the shower after each shift and figure I’ll either get out when I feel clean or when the water runs cold, whatever comes second and more often than not it isn’t until chills run down my spine and icey drops fall from my hair that I finally turn the water off
PATIENT What if i lived my whole life with the patience and the nearly meditative presence of a doctor seated beside a bitchy, snippy patient fuming with unwarranted exasperation in the middle of the night with a hand on her shoulder and a slowness that values the reaction of her heart the metaphorical one more than the one in her chest, more than her physical chemistry, more than the nurses waiting at the door and the paperwork piling up on his desk
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