A surgeon's poem

The Interview:

She remembers the interview. Appear earnest.
A pigtailed bobblehead.
I love science,
I love working with people,
and medicine
Running, she was running
A blue-collar upbringing complete with 2-carbon chain sucking parents
A vacuum.
Say community and rural, alot , and Smile
She wanted, no, needed a career.
A career to engulf her.
Too busy to cry.


And then she was engulfed.
Surgery.
The comfort of control.
And while she was away
Her children grew. What did happen to her husband anyway?
Is that genetic or was it his vacuum?


Her daughters were gone,
The shells were there – gutted, hollow.
For one it had gone on almost half a decade.
Where had she been, where had
the bobblehead been-
Cross-clamping somebody’s fuckin aorta.
Reveling in the glow of another save.


Now, left with the damages, the damaged
The justice system.
How do you fill a shell?
With newspapers? Like we do with an autopsied carcass.
What do you do with hollowed little souls
With innocence not ripped away but
coaxed and teased ?


Can we not tighten up this interview process?

-Hope Baluh, M.D., from Scope, SIU School of Medicine.