It's another heavy, medical one tonight guys.  Consider yourselves warned of triggers, lol

There is something in-human about the hospital.

Something that sucks the life and identity right out of you. 

Being confined to a room for hours on end,

A television with crappy channels your only link to freedom.  

Confined, miserable, often without food or water,

Poked and prodded by a dozen strangers,

Who are all trying to make you "well".

It takes a twisted sort of angel, a very gifted saint, to work the ICU

Where the beeping of every machine,

The rasping breath of every tube,

Counts towards a tense Doom.

A fate of freedom

Or the freedom of death.

In the OR, caring people

Operate on a Being

Reduced to a flesh-colored patch

On a sterile blue field.

They care.  They know.  They are careful.

And yet in the moment, it is hard to remember the gall bladder giving you trouble,

Is more than a gall bladder.

It's part of a person.

A part of their life.

"Are you the nurse for 227?" a Med Student asks.

She can't remember the patient's name. It changes every day.

And HIPAA forbids her to say it anyway. 

"Our lady with the ileus? Yep, I've got her."

A human being,

With a life,

A story,

Reduced

To a number

And a medical

Diagnosis

Cared for in love,

With unending compassion,

With an intense desire to save,

To heal,

To comfort

And yet somehow,

A number all the same.

A Number.

A Gall Bladder.

Another piece of breathing flesh

Covered in tubes, unrecognizable.

Another prisoner held

Awaiting food,

Awaiting freedom.