More on: medicine

a dream that repeated: to find the good / you must uproot the pain

Bless the Doctor, O my soul, and my daughter’s soul and all my daughter’s missing genes shall bless His holy degree.

THE LIGHT OF LATE AFTERNOON touching everything—my hands, my face, the wings of birds—illuminating edges of clouds—the kitchen a bottle of light, pale green filling with sound—the woman playing piano in a room down the hall—everything clean until the boy, the girl, the husband come home—I’m on my knees in the light scrubbing the floor—my…

ON MY BROTHER DECLAN’S third day on life support—the morning he becomes newsworthy—strangers begin to leave messages on the home phone. A funeral director leaves his number. An alarm-system salesman warns of the characters who scour the Globe and the Herald for stories like Declan’s, for tragedies that strike families from well-off towns, leaving their…

There is no way we can thank him, other than not to forget him. But we do not trust our resolve, having to look up his name. Even the name of the virus fades from our minds as strange microbes evolve and spread in Guangdong, driving out old fears with new. SARS, a benign sounding…