The Deep Blue

i.

when I was in kindergarten, we learned about blood: how it carried oxygen, and was red when it left the heart, and returned as blue as ice. we used crayons to color in worksheets, a river of deep cherry and a stream of popsicle blue, and I went home to my mother to teach her about how life worked. how simple. one gear turned another and another and then we inhaled. exhaled. my mother, a nurse, laughed indulgently – ii. when my baby cousin was four, we were in our run-down family home in Nang Loeng in Bangkok, where she fell over a glass bottle of coca-cola and slit open her wrist. here, rivulets of blood ran amok, unrestrained. her body coming undone in seconds, pale creamy flesh marred by sweet brown syrup and strawberry blood. she sobbed and I sat there, frozen, as my father carried her out towards the hospital. we sat there afterwards, watching cola pool around our ankles, simmering. iii. my hands are sterilized, double-gloved, my gown secured. the surgeon begins the show – here, trace the artery. listen for the melody that the body sings when the leg still lives. here, throw a stitch, a tie, feel the pulse. watch the blood ooze and spray and scream and tame it over and over again. days later, we watch the patient stand again, a child taking their first steps. for once, I see how it is to feel close to creation, to salvage flesh and blood, to see how the doctors in Thailand saved my cousin’s wrist, and understand that, in time, all that remains is a jagged scar, and a distant memory.

Parisorn Thepmankorn MD Class of 2023 Rutgers New Jersey Medical School