and all i can do is hang on. because i know that if i can just sleep, if i can just take an afternoon walk, if i can just sit on the couch and read a novel or something it will all go away. it's like there's a little dial that reads "evil" and it turns that way when i don't sleep. but i never could sleep on call. call isn't all that bad. really, it isn't. i just sit in this little room and wait for the pager to go off. and it won't be that bad when it goes off. i'm on neurology this month. there's almost no need for me to be there at all. i'm there to go to the emergency room, examine the patient, and call the neurologist. this allows the neurologist to stay home while i'm on call. so i'm on call. a lot. and it really isn't all that bad. but the thing is that after enough call, after enough nights lying in that little room trying not to try, trying not to try to get to sleep, the dial starts to turn. i start to feel like i'm trying to do hopeless things, impossible things. the waiting room in the ER starts to look immense, the patients spilling out of it start to scare me. i get smaller. and it's like i can fell them there, waiting. i can feel the years of suffering leaking out of them down there, downstairs, waiting. we're all waiting. and the waiting just makes it worse. and then they trickle in and the pager starts going off and i don't want to hear it. the thing that waits in my stomach for fear to show up twists on itself and a hole opens up and all i can hear is no no no no no. please don't tell me about the years you've been suffering. please don't tell me about how much it hurts. don't show me, don't show me with your hands how it feels like clawing inside you. stop telling me you want to die, that it makes you want to die, that no one will talk to you any more, that you can't think about anything else any more, that you can't work any more, that you don't feel like a man any more. don't tell me about the doctors who didn't help you, they couldn't help you, nobody can. we can't fix you. we can't, can't, can't fix you. we are not holding out on you. we don't hold back our best cures in order to hear you beg for them. please stop begging me for them. i don't have them, nobody does. i can't fix you. only God can. i don't know why He didn't. i don't know why He won't. just please, oh please stop talking. don't look at me like that. the dial twists and i don't want to hear it, i can't stand to hear it any more. and i don't want to be that person. i don't want them to see me cringe inside when they talk. i don't want them to feel me pull away. i don't want to pull away. but i am so tired, i am so very tired. i just want to be someplace quiet with no pager to go off. i just want to sit under a tree and think about nothing. i want to sit in a cafe sipping iced tea and picking at a salad. i want to try on shoes. i want to go to the grocery store or the bank or the dry cleaners. i want to walk a dog. i want to be someplace they're not, these people with their boundless agony. i want to be the kind of person who doesn't know about them. i want to be the kind of person who doesn't notice a bandage peeking out from a pair of trousers, who doesn't notice a limp, who doesn't see when someone needs to use their hands to get out of a chair, when someone can't go up a flight of stairs. i want to be the kind of person who doesn't look at a group of strangers and wonder how many of them have lost a child. i want to be away from that room, i just want to be away from that room, i just want to forget all about that room. |
