Night Float
PHILIP JURASINSKI, M.D. UMKC PEDIATRIC RESIDENT
Float with me over this indifferent, star-shaded, fiberglass ocean where my fellow struggling health-care survivors emerge emotionally marooned on the mesh tile islands that line the hospital after catching the adrift citizens in the community and launching them against the tide to sunnier shores.
I live in the United States where we are perfectly unionized to not provide equal access. When the scrap heap ship capsizes, the crew passes teething rings, hula hoops, weighted toilet seats— to sling around Kansas City’s waist and tow it, flopping and gasping, upon the pine wharf. All the schooners skirt by, waving Jolly Roger flags that steal time and attention like societal spies from the archipelagos that spread across the sea of Troost. Your face spreads across a patient’s wanted poster each morning as you print lists designed from your misery. After twilit tsunami waves aim crosshairs of saltwater-rusted rifles with cold unyielding violet gazes, they snipe your ability to feel, and the kindness bobs away like barrels full of air and overworked toner cartridges.
Hear the seagulls flocking overhead to cry how single payors alone can’t toe the line.
See beyond the black spaces into the skulls of those suffering. Nick the end of your judging tongue on your silver saber pen. Sharpen your senses on rousing rum that we drink as we eat in our basement galley.
We lurch together, rescuing stragglers from their leaky lifeboat lives.
Now the aurora arises to preserve people.
Now is the morning to mutinize.
The Portrait of Resilience
MAANVI AGGARWAL UMKC MEDICAL STUDENT
