The following manuscript was submitted to the April 2017 Arts in Medicine Themed Writing Contest.
“Compassion”
A pale moon hangs above
The workroom clock reads six, but
Is it day or night?
A total trainwreck so they say
Could it have gone another way
An emptied cart and silenced room
Red arrows blur across a screen
An endless line that surely means
Something
But I forgot
Lives upended, fate unkind
We bear witness in a daily grind
And so we laugh
Because we cannot cry
Till spirit drained, numb, and done
No kindness left to summon up
Compassion we so freely give
Had we but for ourselves enough
Resident Physician Contributing Writer
University of Rochester/Strong Memorial Hospital
Caroline Hsu is an internal medicine resident physician at University of Rochester/Strong Memorial Hospital.