when surrounded…

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do not sit in the building and wait it out.

do as butch cassidy and the sundance kid did,
and, in gold and sepia, run across the courtyard
filled with the spraying bullets and sand and
that which has chased you and flee.

this time of year is rife with the riflefire of personal history.
a week ago i sat in a room full of nurses, talking with them
about patients who had changed them…
and thought back about where i was a year before,
talking with another group full of stories when my phone rang,
the cancer was calling.

and a year ago today we lived this
and said goodbye to what would’ve been our 2nd child.

and i could go on and on with markers and memories
and rewrite each entry in the new context of a year
that has been draped like a tablecloth over a scratched up table
to help it feel new again, softer at least.

but i won’t.

instead i’ll tell you a few stories before we, yes, flee
into the mexican ether and get away from anniversaries we choose
not to celebrate.

leanne decided that she needed to watch a knee surgery.
and so, she went over to the general surgery dept to watch one.
she said that only when she went in, did she remember that it was
the place where she was when she was very sick, the day they took
the baby, the day the placed the port, the day they took the bone marrow out.

it was quiet in there.  everyone was going about doing their jobs.

and she went up to the nurse:

“you look familiar…i think you were my patient,” she said.
“i’m leanne…..from physical therapy.”

and she said it was as if the whole room turned,
like a flower on a stem following the light,
as if they were waiting to hear her say her name,
and they all came over and hugged her.

—–

and there was something else i never wrote,
that the day we met with the oncologist for the first time
he said that he would not be there for the first round of chemo.

“why not?” we asked.
“i’ll be on vacation,” he said.
“where are you off to?” we asked.
“just staying at home with my family,” he said.

5 months later at the fundraiser, he showed up with his
family…..

and a 5 month old baby.

somehow, even being a new doctor, he had known
not to tell us about his wife’s pregnancy when he knew
that his patient would be losing hers.

and i don’t think he planned it, or even thought it through.
it just came naturally to him, to listen that deeply
to us.

—-

and so we flee.

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