I take care of the healthy too, you know.
It’s not just the sick - not just those with bad hearts and bad valves and bad lungs and bad kidneys and bad everything. They are the sick, but sometimes they’re the easiest to care for because there’s always something to be done - an IV to be hung and blood to be drawn and warm blankets to be fetched and tube feeds to be given and oxygen saturations to be monitored. They’re the easy ones. It’s the healthy ones you have to watch out for.
They’re the ones that walk on their own, make light jokes with you, and wave you off when you offer to grab them - another blanket, another pillow, another cup of ice for their aching throats. They’re the ones who look fine and walk fine and talk like your neighbor down the street or the man who jumped your car battery last week. They’re the normals. But they too, are sick.
They hide their pain. They hide their loneliness. They hide their family drama. They hide their despair and they hide their questions and they hide their deep, abiding sadness. They’re the ones that you sit down for - they’re the ones you have to get to know before you start probing for the hurt and pain that sits simmering below the surface of seemingly healthy bodies. They’re the sisters and brothers and mothers and cousins and nieces that flew in from Chicago. They’re the relatives that wink at you when they smuggle in champagne for the man who will be dead 3 days after New Year’s. They’re the mothers who bought their sons a car, only to have that car wrecked and repossessed and their child back in the hospital for surgery. They’re the ones who ache and ache and ache, and then ache some more.
They’re the ones I cannot work to heal, the ones who have the luxury of choosing vulnerability, the ones who remain aloof and untouchable right up until the moment they break. They are the healthy. They are you, and they are me. They are my patients too.
