Publication
Article
Psychiatric Times
Not Guilty
Author(s):
Our daughter’s first day of Med School ten years ago, computer charged, a career choice . . .
Our daughter’s first day of Med School
ten years ago, computer charged, a career choice
nourished by frozen yogurt she inhaled
in the hospital café, her too-sick-for-school days
spent watching videos from a call room bed,
our spooky trips to the sub-basement morgue,
dinners that orbited depression, dialysis,
dengue fever, and death, our complaints
about administrators and managed care,
moments she witnessed the weight
of a doctor’s responsibility when we left
the table to answer a suffering patient’s call.
We never told her, “Become a doctor,”
but today at 5 pm we hear her last sign out
from training, a married mother who absorbed
her parents the way bodies soak up sugar and salt,
relieved to know she witnessed the arc and ache
of our lives in Medicine and judged us “Not guilty”
of crimes we committed in the name of healing.
