I’ve been thinking about what it means for you to trust me.

I don’t trust me yet. I’m all fingers: fumbling with your gown, searching for a landing pad on your skin for my flying saucer stethoscope.

Your skin like tissue paper, the veins beneath blue and unabashed.
Your skin slick with sweat, stretched over ribs like a drum.
Your skin clean, dry, and intact.
Your skin broken and cratered.

Do you like me? I want to be friends. My instinct is agreeable, easy laughter. But I’m learning that that’s not always what you need from me. You need, I’m told, a lighthouse. Not too close, but not too far. Visible but not blinding. Warm and inviting and stalwart on the shore.

So while we chew the fat I turn your every word over in gloved hands, clinicalizing your story and your state of mind. Euthymic affect. Poor historian. Do you know who the president is? Can I see a picture of your dog?

Meanwhile, you’re cracking jokes on the worst day of your life.
You’re lock-lipped and angry and I don’t blame you, but I really need to know if you have chest pain.
You smile tightly and I smile tightly back. We wait for the interpreter to say Shibboleth.
You speak English but I have no idea what you mean.
You’re my postman, my waitress, my neighbor.
You’re Mr. Rogers if he ran a bodega in Bed-Stuy.
You’re in no acute distress unless your ex-wife comes up.

You’re making me a better doctor and I’m waking you from the first good sleep you’ve had in days.

Now let me see if I’ve got this right:

You were in your usual state of health when the stairs, worn by years of confident climbing, started to multiply. Every day a couple more: cruel slats of pine snapping into place, pressing the apartment skyward, your favorite armchair just out of reach.  The eggs in your paper bag of groceries turned to lead, and then the oranges – finally on sale – to stone. And over months the same lungs you use for laughing left you hungry. And now you’re here in this sterile, noisy place, where you haven’t been since your little sister gave birth.

So how many pillows are you sleeping on at night?

See, I get to see you at your worst; I just wish we could make it even. Invite you over when I’m beached on the couch on a Sunday, head still clanging with last night. That’s as close as we’ll get because I don’t know what it is to suffer. Not really.

By the way, about how many alcoholic drinks do you have per week?

Pupils are equal, round, and reactive to light. (You have my father’s cataracts and I need to remind him again about that surgery.)
Capillary refill within 2 seconds. (You have my mother’s long nailbeds, she lotions them religiously at stoplights.)
I have your daughter’s millennial sensibility and I’m telling you what to do.

This morning is a catecholamine surge. You’re dragging in each breath, pushing words out like boulders uphill. It’s the first time I’ve seen you scared and it’s scaring me. I try not to let it show. You say you’re trapped in a body that’s given up before you have. I meet your eyes but I’m mulling over your numbers, tracing out the molecules betraying you.

Will I ever be worthy of this intimacy?

Will I have time for it, once your every inhale is officially in my job description?

Will you remember me?

You ask if I believe in god and they haven’t taught me how to answer that one yet.

It’s nice to meet you, I know what your kidneys look like. In black-and-white at least. 

What brings you to the hospital? 

I’m glad you came in and I wish this never happened.