Tag: emergency

Three Poems by Ann E. Wallace

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The Funeral Director, Spring 2020

He bites his lower lip, clasps
his hands behind his back, and steels
his legs into a wide stance, knowing

one brimming tear holds power to unleash
the others welled up and waiting.
It used to be the unexpected

that disrupted his balance—the new suit
purchased two sizes too small
for a teen struck down in the road,

the calm words of a mother
to her grown child laid out before her, speaking
of tomorrow as if nothing had changed,

or the collapse and despair of another
who knew everything had.
But in these endless days

of horror when illness envelops
and makes a home in our city—
when the morgues are overflowing,

and the bodies are stacked and held
three weeks for burial, when the caskets
are closed and families could not kiss

or send off their dear beloved—he works
in solitude, carrying the grief of legions.
He removes the tubes and bathes

the bodies of the deceased, dresses
each one in clothing brought
by loved ones, set their hands

and combs their hair, placing them
in caskets their families would never open,
and the mounting waves of sorrow

swell high and higher, until they crest
and the rushing waters wash,
and wash, and wash over him.

*

Emergency Room Visits in March 2020

When they turned the pediatric emergency room
into a COVID triage area in the early days,

decals of monkeys with curling tails,
loping elephants, spotted giraffes grazed

the walls. The doctor who took my vitals
was tired, hadn’t seen his kids in two weeks.

The hospital prepared to admit me, then sent
me home after two rounds of bloodwork and testing.

They needed the bed. Three days later, I returned
on my 50th birthday, barely conscious,

bypassed the children’s unit, and was wheeled inside
where the serious cases were handled.

The aide hesitated to help me onto the bed,
offered a gloved hand only after I pleaded,

and my new doctor would not step inside
my curtain. He poked his masked face

through the gap in the fabric to ask
my cell number. He wrote it on a Post-it

and backed away like I was a caged tiger.
I never received his call.

*

Cleared to Leave

My face is pale and splotchy when my ex-
husband picks me up at home, like death
blooms within me. The weather, April

dreary. Jason drives me to the emergency room—
my third hospital this spring. I wear a pink
woolen cap, loop my oxygen line around my ears,

tuck it behind my glasses, hook the cannula
under my nose. I lug the tank inside
and sit in a folding chair in the makeshift

waiting room—the department had been under
renovation when the virus hit. The work
on the building has stopped. The work of saving

lives has not. My doctor called ahead
for a lung scan. The ER doctor takes my blood
and vitals but never orders the scan.

I rest in my thin, faded hospital gown,
in the overwhelmed ER, so much like the others,
each one unique in its chaos. Cleared to leave,

I dress slowly, layer by layer—shirt and pants,
sweater, jacket, hat. Untethered from the hospital
oxygen, reconnected to my emergency supply

from home, I hoist the tank. Alone, undirected,
I stumble through the halls, carry my heavy load,
search for the unmarked exit. Outside in the cold,

I realize I left my glasses on my hospital bed.
They are gone. Per pandemic policy, thrown
into the trash with all other personal effects.

*

Ann E. Wallace is Poet Laureate Emeritus of Jersey City, New Jersey and host of The WildStory: A Podcast of Poetry and Plants. Her second poetry collection, Days of Grace and Silence: A Chronicle of COVID’s Long Haul, was published by Kelsay Books in 2024. She has previously published work in ONE ART, Thimble, Halfway Down the Stairs, Gyroscope Review, Wordgathering, and other journals. You can follow her online at AnnWallacePhD.com and on Instagram @annwallace409.

Two Poems by Rachel Marie Patterson

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Stonetown Road

Sunday, black coffee and
rectangles of dishwasher soap.
We get the call at 10:30—
my mother-in-law fell hard
on the kitchen floor.
So we race two hours north
to find her in a mechanical bed,
two staples in her head,
asking every nurse to take her
for a cigarette. When I ask,
she can’t remember whether
she chewed the aspirin.
Outside the security glass,
a hawk surveys the embankment.
The night we met, I howled
with laughter as she gripped
my sleeve with a gauzy, manicured
hand. Her eyes were as clear
as the lake behind us. How
my husband gushed and beamed.
His mother used to write cards
and keep appointments, before
her pretty cursive looped away
to oblivion. In the ICU, he leans
to kiss her bloody forehead.
I know now I will watch him
lose her, slowly. Driving back,
we pass his childhood home–
the natural pool full of snakes.

*

Emergency Vet

When the dog stops blinking, I wrap
her in a towel and swerve the highway,
one palm cupping her distended bowel.
In the cement waiting room, black
coffee in a styrofoam cup. I stare
at the framed canine dental chart
while they thread the catheter and split
her open. Remember how she ate tissues
from the trash because they were mine,
wore circles into my bedroom carpet.
For 13 years, she followed me
from home to home, licking the salt
from my eyes. Now, there is nothing
to do but leave her.

*

Rachel Marie Patterson is the co-founder and editor of Radar Poetry. She holds an MFA from UNC Greensboro. Her poems appear in Cimarron Review, Harpur Palate, New Plains Review, The Journal, Thrush, Parcel Magazine, Smartish Pace, and others. The winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize, her work has also been nominated for Best New Poets and Best of the Net. Her poem “Connemara” was a Special Mention for the Pushcart Prize in 2019. She is the author of Tall Grass With Violence (FutureCycle Press, 2022).

Two Poems by Rachel Mallalieu

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How to Survive a Crowded ER Waiting Room

Be grateful for this insider view.
Unless you’ve been stabbed or shot, do not
crumple to the ground and scream help me
help me. The triage nurses have seen it all

and will remain unmoved, possibly hostile
in the face of your histrionics. Do not shake
your fist at the staff and threaten to call
the CEO or the local news or write a bad

review of the hospital on Yelp. Those of us
who withstood the scourge of Covid
and stuck around are no longer swayed by fear.
Here’s what you should do. Put the hood

of your jacket up and withdraw your chin
into your collar so only your eyes are showing.
Observe the chaos. Be pleased you are not the addict
nodding off in the corner, his arms more wound

than skin. Consider thanking god that you are better
off than the man with the matted beard
who dresses the tree trunks of his leaking
legs with garbage bags.

Last shift, a man figured out how to skip to the front
of the queue. After quietly waiting for six hours, he walked
towards the bathroom, and the clot which nestled
in his lungs finally caused his heart to halt,

then he collapsed in the doorway with one leg
bent beneath him and the other extended into
the waiting room. We all went running—started CPR,
pushed the medications, shocked him—everything.

We tried, tried for over an hour.
His wife had gone home to sleep because the wait
was so long. No one wanted her to wreck
the car so we didn’t tell her he was dead

when we called and asked her to return to the ER,
and told her in person instead. Her wails
echoed all the way into the back. Know this,
it’s not the worst thing if you wait awhile.

*

Penumbra

The geese flew south and promptly
returned, floating in a pond
that should be frozen.

In this disordered February,
starlings blanket the oak like leaves
and half the cherry tree blossoms.

When I was young, my father
was rarely home; when he arrived,
his gift of presence forged a corona

more luminous with each absence.
Not long ago, my mother called
and screamed he was unconscious,

likely dying. I raced the ambulance
to the hospital and arrived to find
him alive, but eclipsed behind the eyes,

both here and there. As his halo dims,
shadow remains and it still hasn’t snowed
this winter. Rain displaces worms

who writhe on the sidewalk.
These days, I pray for a glimpse
of the cardinal’s ruby breast.

*

Rachel Mallalieu is an emergency physician and mother of five. Some of her work is featured or forthcoming in Rattle, Chestnut Review, Whale Road Review and Superstition Review. Rachel is the author of A History of Resurrection (Alien Buddha Press 2022).