Doctor Death

Photo by Phil Spiegel

Since a child I could feel a wind in my bones, something stirring under my skin, in my breath, in my bloody, pumping heart. Attention defective, speech impeded, psychologically charged, there were plenty of things to calculate and point to, but above and despite them was that same shapely shivering of my veins, the call of the moon, the hum in the trees. Something else ... something else...

I remember a distinct feeling on my 14th birthday, from nothing in particular, that I was destined for something, that I had a gift to be discovered. Dismissed as wanton importance I forgot about my youthful insight.

Long past the years and with them came too many passings of friends and family...

SR - 15 - leukemia
PH - 42 - Chron's
CA - 49 - heart attack
P - 24 - suicide
PPS - 90 - stroke, old age
ABS - late 80s - heartbreak, old age, diabetes
LEA - late 80s - kidney failure, diabetes
JB - 50 - heart attack
IH - 70s - medical complications
and just last month,
PS - 23 - medical complications

...to name a few. And to become so intimate with Death, comes a change inside, a determined fight weathered by a complacent acceptance. To digest tragedy with such calm sharpness is both a gift and a curse. I oft wonder where go my sentiments seemingly un-felt... do they hover unknown and ominously? do they dissipate in the beckoning winds? do they flutter constantly in my belly and root in the ever myserious faceless pain of my chest? Or is this my staff and sword?

Then some more years passed and I approached the time for my medical school departure. Floating back in time across a daylight dream, I remembered that distinct sensation and uttered aloud, "Oh I see now. I'm a healer."

Though my plate piles high it turns to stone and stands unwaveringly, but curiously weightless. And with each vivid crest I absentmindedly close my eyes and contentedly await the crushing waves, washing and drenching, but recoiling all the same. The ebb and flow of death and rejuvenation that turns the world over both steals my breath and fuels my flames and it is this constant cycling that forms the rungs of my ladder. I fall from time to time but somehow I never lose my ground. This is what keeps me bloody and pumping, this I know and this I trust.

So be it, a graceful torture, my gift: Doctor Death.

I welcome it all.

The Potential

Last week, over a GnT, my fellow clinic officers were giving me the low down on the psych clinic I'll be co-managing for the next two years. As is expected in a bitty place like Cowtown, one officer ran into an old fling at the bar. With mild discontent, she turned to me and asked if I were dating anyone, and, as is expected with a love-drunk, heartbreak veteran like myself, my romance skeptic answered first, "maybe," trained never to assume the best but always the worst (in this case, it's in my head or a ploy of ill intent). Being a third year she instinctively offered my lowly M1-ness some advice, or really, no advice at all, to just "go for it," saying this is the year of exploration. She told me about her first med school interests: the first was "false" and the second was "too good." With the last she explained, "not 'good' in the sense that I'm not worthy, but that I'm too..." and here she quoted an old movie I thought no one watched: Anne of Avonlea. Anne's best friend Diana has just accepted a marriage proposal to a good man, much to Anne's dismay:

Anne Shirley: Fred is... extremely good.
Marilla Cuthbert: That is exactly what he should be! Would you want to marry a wicked man?
Anne Shirley: Well, I wouldn't marry anyone who was really wicked, but I think I'd like it if he could be wicked and wouldn't.

There's a precise moment when you meet someone new when you know beyond doubt whether or not they are going to understand you. This was it. "Exactly," I replied with flourish. It's not that she and I are wicked but we've mischeviously flirted with that edge, well intended of course, and to find a kindred spirit in another would be to match heart to heart, the same potential for... cleverly playful behavior. What is intriguing about this new development of mine, is that, new for me, his cards are played close to chest and I, for once, can't read him with the definitive reassurance I usually have. I suppose this is what everything is supposed to be like, not to know, but to play to find out.