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 your heart still pumps. Protocol is scripted, initiating actions without my intent. We transfer you onto a new bed, cut your clothes, and rush to place an arterial line for close blood pressure monitoring.

Nothing could have prepared me for your arrival
and there is little which helps me process your departure.
the pager in my scrubs tases me with your Level 1 entry to the trauma bay:
young female, motorvehicle versus pedestrian.

Were you wearing a feather jacket? Because I see it in your hair,
and the dainty gold chain that you put on this morning is caught tangled in your teeth.

There is ambition but nothing else on my mind: Commotion doesn’t notice my absence. I am still just a puppet, somehow moving parts in pieces for thirty seven entire minutes. It’s my turn again. I watch my fingers overlap while my upper body pulses to preserve your own. A tuft of white feathers ignores sterility, it bounces with each press. My senior resident is four inches to the left with his blade: He places a chest tube.

But your blood pressure plunges, despite this network of strategy. The wires of my marionette begin to loosen, and I beg you to try harder.

I know you straightened your hair.

I’ll fix it after this, I promise.

We can replace your necklace.

My offers are refused and there is one last act to save you. A scalpel introduces us to your punctured aorta, the disguised culprit all along. It took advantage of my vacancy: A void carved out by exhaustion, dread, and denial.

It is 1:37 AM. The moment of silence is so still that the director drops my strings. The script has ended, and I remain a puppet, paralyzed and collapsed, on an empty stage.

Dana Alshekhlee, MS4
Saint Louis University School of Medicine