I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Story Bone

Not so sure it's a story bone, 'cause right at the moment I'm thinking it's a poem of some sort.

One of the other students at my lab table is trying to get a job reading heart monitors. Many modern hospitals have rooms like this, filled with banks of monitoring equipment (literally hundreds of them) where there are a second set of eyes watching the feeds. All those monitors connected to live people throughout the hospital system (they don't even need to be in the same building). And someone watching in the dark rooms in the bowels of the hospital, making sure nobody is dying. Ready with a call button to bring help. No names on the monitors, and the person watching doesn't even need to have nursing training to do their job. It's like a night janitor's job. The anonymous faces who scrub up the detritus of the day and make the floors all shiny, those who make the world work properly and make your shoes squeak on the floor. Imagine the stress they feel. You can't see the patient, can't hear them breathing or see their chests rise and fall. Can't feel their pulse. But you know all those things, watching the screens. Watching the patients breath twice removed. See their hearts pulse and flicker on the screens. Waiting. Waiting to reach out if need be, like angels stooping from heaven. Waiting to switch off the dead monitors.

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