One Week

1: Pharmacy

Between pulling meds from the shelves,
counting pills, and printing labels,
chemotherapy drugs were prepared under a fume hood.

The pharmacist warned me, told me they didn’t let women
of childbearing age mix the drugs or transport them to the
infusion clinic.

I stood back, let the men do their work
just as my mother and I did when the boys
set up their tree stands, their ground blinds,
their fletches and arrowheads—

2: Housekeeping

We visited rooms and collected soiled linens, made beds,
restocked towels, washcloths, sheets, and pillowcases, 
prepared the rooms for sleep studies—

While sweeping the hallway near the cafeteria, the housekeeper asked,

Do you know what a holding room is?

and she took me to the refrigerated chamber where bodies were kept.

The room was so close to the cafeteria, right where everyone
could see it, as if the hospital was reminding us
that we can’t live without seeing death.

3: Sterile processing

The room took me back to the clearings just beyond the woods
where my father and brothers field dressed the animals:
Piles of warm organ, blood all the way to the elbows.
It smelled like iron and wet pavement. 

In the dimly lit room, we loaded bins into the stainless-steel sink basins:
Trays of surgical tools, suction containers filled with blood 
and fat.

In the dimly lit room, we rinsed and readied the instruments for the autoclave.
It was difficult for me to watch the blood and fluid rush to the drain,
to witness the loss of it, treasured material that bodies
worked so hard to produce—

4: Wound care

Someone told me about joining a bone marrow registry.
I only needed to drop a cheek swab in the mail, 
but I couldn’t fathom the donation—
In my mind, bone marrow was deep, hidden, and private, 
something difficult to reach and extract.

During my shift in the wound care center, we prepped a young woman
for a bone marrow donation, her anxiety mirroring my own.
She asked for something to calm her, and we gave it.
She asked about the recovery, if her marrow would rebuild.
In my mind, I repeated:

Body, great creator, show us what you yet may do.

5: Dietary

We ensured patient meals matched their doctor’s orders:
Limited sugar or salt, allergy-free, soft foods only.

We prepped cold items for the salad bar—
lettuce mixes, hardboiled eggs—
and the grill items in hot oil—
potato wedges and chicken fingers. 
I could tell when the items were ready to come out
because of the dampened chattering of the oil,
the way it sounded like animals whispering to each other—

My father never wanted to eat the hospital cafeteria food,
so we brought him sandwiches. 
He ate quietly as my mother, the boy, and I sat in a
half circle around the bed like researchers,
waiting to see if the parts of him that had gone missing
would come back—

"that we can't live without seeing death" is adapted from Psalm 89:48 (NIV)
and "Body, great creator, show us what you yet may do" is adapted from the hymn "God, Who Stretched the Spangled Heavens."