Fall/Winter 2006 - University of Rochester Medical Center

Heal me doctor
by Frank Edwards
Six am teaching rounds with Dr. Morgan
We semi-circle the bed.
Here we are, my dear,
The roosters, again.
How’d you sleep
Any pain
Breathing well
Like goslings in short white coats
We imprint the mood.
It’s Alan’s turn.
He clears his throat,
Introduces himself,
aware of Morgan and his
knowledge of the spleen,
He palpates first her sunken abdomen,
gestures grandly,
then helps her sit.
His stethoscope skips from side to side
down her Quasimodo back, vertebrae,
jut like spires. Lying her down, he directs
his auscultation to the front.
Five feet away
We hear her failing heart
Balloon the skin between her ribs
Where the breast is missing.
Something else draws our eyes
chestward to Alan
The earpieces of his shiny Littmann
ring his neck, disengaged,
A shaman’s amulet.
Morgan’s face stays priestly.
Halfway across the heart,
Alan stops and straightens,
His forehead moist,
he clears his throat again.
Mrs. Smith, would you mind if I listened to you
A different way now
I don’t mind, she says.
Yes indeed, says Morgan.
Splendid idea.
The dying woman does not see
Alan slip the prongs
Into his ears,
But she smiles along
With our laughter,
Floats in it,
Eyes closed.
now a third year resident in internal medicine at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco.
Jain proposed the idea of an anthology to Clark, who supported it enthusiastically.
“This project has been a phenomenal experience in understanding how a civilian is made
into a doctor and how poetry can deepen a young physician’s understanding of disease. It is a
book for anybody affected by the health care profession, patients and providers,” Jain said.
One of the poets published in Body Language is Frank Edwards, M.D. (M ’79), who teaches
a School of Medicine workshop in creative writing. He also is the president of Delphi Emergency
Physicians, which covers five community hospital emergency departments in the Finger Lakes
region. Edwards says there are few things as deeply satisfying as a poem that works.
The anthology is broken into six sections that correspond to the stages of a life in
medicine: Medical Student, First Year; Second Year; Clinical Years; Intern; Resident, and
Attending. Body Language is published by BOA Editions Ltd., a Pulitzer Prize-winning, not-forprofit
publishing house based in Rochester, N.Y.
Frank Edwards
FALL / WINTER 2006
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