Eudaimonia

I am a puppet. Invisible strings attach my arms around the blankets and my eyelids to each other and my legs to the ground and my fingertips to this doppler. Reality yearns to connect. But the hour is desperate in this screenplay. Look for her pulse echos while I smear gel onto your groin to see what read more…

I stood beneath my attending’s towering frame. My knees were buckling from standing and the crease in my new sneakers deepened every time I rose on my toes for a clearer window. I was unaware of the plan for this patient, as I’d walked in with his body face down on the operating table. I’d read more…

The morning prayer at the hospital had always been an innocuous part of the day until one day in the middle of pre-rounds I was stopped in my tracks by my new resident team. Confused, I looked at them as they held a finger up, their eyes trained on the ceiling as they waited expectantly read more…

It was a bitter morning in San Francisco when it happened, mist rising above the city like a ghostly dragon’s wing. My father woke up, looked at the grainy picture of me on the nightstand—a picture he had taken himself, with one of those cheap disposable cameras—and for several minutes, he could not recognize my read more…

Dear Ms. Wren, I am not addressing you by your real name, but I chose one that I felt captured your kind, humorous spirit and a life well lived. Our first introduction was not in person, but through a note that read, “chief complaint of vision loss.” Words fall flat and sound, expressionless on a read more…