Three doctor’s visits
Zara Aziz Bristol, England The Cathedral by Auguste Rodin. 1908. Musée Rodin. Photograph by Daniel Stockman. 2010. CC BY-SA 2.0. Only one week ago Yasmin had been at the same flats to see her patient, Jenny Johnson. Jenny was a lovely lady of around fifty-two, with a lilting Irish accent and a penchant for […]
Chemo Room
Sarah Smith Pike Road, Alabama, USA Chemotherapy iv. National Cancer Institute. Photo Credit: Linda Bartlett Cancer makes me glad I am fat. Mr. Weiss, two chairs down from Jack and me today, does not agree. Two months ago, Mr. Weiss tried to convince me of the importance of keeping in shape and maintaining a healthy weight. […]
Jacarandas- a dream
In the year when the Olympic Games were held in Australia, the Jacarandas were in full bloom and their blue blossoms wafted through the air. At the Olympic campus an English boy and an Australian girl fell in love. Every night they would be seen walking through the cool air holding hands. Sometimes they went […]
Butterfly day
Marsal Sanches Bismarck, North Dakota, USA In some cultures, black butterflies are considered omens of death. He did not believe that a black butterfly was an omen of death. It was just some old superstition he remembered hearing from his Brazilian babysitter many years before, sort of a South American banshee. Someone would see […]
Percy’s last day
Shampa Sinha Tasmania, Australia McIndoe operating at East Grinstead by Anna Zinkeisen, 1944. Percy missed his regular train that morning, the one that would have given him a comfortable half-hour cushion between his arrival at the station and “knife-to-skin” time at the operating theatre. He felt his anxiety levels rising within him like bile […]
Heroes need medical care too
Liam Farrell Rostrevor, Ireland God Pan Hercules Polyphemus I was driving along a quiet country road when I saw the first bluebell, its delicate beauty a promise of spring. I stopped to relish the moment, to live in the now. Birdsong, the wind rustling through hedgerows, and the disheveled dryad loveliness left me humbled. […]
Looking glass land
Christy D. Di Frances Boston, Massachusetts, USA I Statue in the garden of St. John’s Memorial Chapel, Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, MA. It begins the way stories often end: that excruciatingly one-sided conversation with some loved one or another. His grandmother. Finally something seems to awaken her from the obscurity of her world. ‘Do […]
The Resident
Sarah de Forest Chicago, Illinois, USA The Operation, Christian Schad He is a handsome man, no one can deny it, and he has a pleasant smile. In this terrible place, its inhabitants ravaged by hunger and disease, he always looks as though he just came from the barber, and his men know that slovenliness […]
Joys of Motherhood
Kenneth Joe Helsinki, Finland As I waited, I remembered my childhood. I seem to drift back into my childhood nowadays. Maybe it is because I am a mother now, so I am forced to draw on my early memories so as to parent my newborn well. My baby was born ten days ago at […]
Anosognosia
Michael Ellman Chicago, IL, United States South Pacific, 1950. Joseph Cable (William Tabbert) watches as Bloody Mary (Juanita Hall, top) and Liat (Betta St. John) perform the song “Happy Talk” “Joseph Cable, at your service! U.S. Marines, World War Two, retired—at ease, Doctor. Let’s be casual, shall we?” My patient is tall and ramrod […]