Two True Stories

The Gerald F. Berlin Creative Writing Award at the University of Massachusetts Medical School honors the poetry, fiction, and essays of medical students, physicians, in training (interns, residents, and fellows), graduate students, and nursing students from the medical school. The award was established to encourage creative writing by health professionals in training and to honor the father of Richard M. Berlin, MD, who sponsors the award.

subtle bend on the rural collector, black walnut tree grown thick and varicose on this landing place between the pine-scarp and the lake’s edge,

dust hung in plumes

i crossed the living room to the barn sparrows nesting, gram walked out for the mail, jul arched the hose at her begonia beds, my grandfather scouted the fields for sowing season, and the goldenrod rooted down in the hollows of the cattle plod groove

the dirt bike banked right— roared and slammed against the ditch rim—

we forgot everythingbut the mud plug in the tailpipethe half-moon grimaceof the boy that no one kneweverything happened so slow and so fastmy grandfather said laterone minute we were all there together— we waited a lifetime for an ambulance on these backroads—

and the next, i boarded the volunteer rigin bloody pajamas, my hand still on the bag valve,jul close behind

and my grandfather hastenedto pick up the bits of brokenhelmet in the grassand then he set them

back

down

...

my grandfather, as a child,watched the neighbor’s boy runpale-faced from the millcradling his crushed

rose-petal

hand

Elizabeth M. Irvin, MD Candidate, Class of 2026Population-Based Urban and Rural Community Health (PURCH) TrackEmail: elizabeth.irvin@umassmed.edu