Mr. M

Dr. Migliore I step off the subway, up the elevator, and up several flights of stairs. There’s a homeless man there who always uses the last stair of the lower staircase as a tray for his food. And by tray, I mean he sets his half-eaten rice burrito directly onto the step and picks around at it while I imagine the guacamole is mixing with Hep B and C. diff and MRSA. He looks up at me, I promise myself for the 100th time I’m going to start carrying cash or Kind bars or something; I give him my best sheepish face, and emerge at street level. I walk toward my hospital and pass a gentleman who sits on a ledge next to the old medical school, missing parts of both feet. I imagine that (insert chronic poorly treated disease) has ravaged his body. He seems to be a permanent fixture, always pleasant, never seeming to desire anything, including contact. He will sometimes smile at me, but in a way that is more of an automatic response than someone interacting with another person. I walk by old important buildings, where generations of fine doctors have been trained in the art of human suffering. It’s a beautiful campus juxtaposed with things that aren’t beautiful, or more accurately, have at some point lost their beauty. I approach the sprawling complex, where a middle-aged man is on the phone, tears streaming down his face, unable to form sentences. I imagine this is what people look like when they hear an air-raid siren and they know they can’t get out of the way in time, o...
Source: The Hospitalist - Category: Hospital Management Authors: Tags: Essay Source Type: research