Contents
Part I.
Nursing 101
Selling Kisses at the Diner
Mornings We Rolled Pills into Fluted Cups
Surgical Rotation
The Nurse’s First Autopsy
Apology to the Woman in Room 23
Stoned
Intubating the Corpse
Angel of Mercy
Falling Temperature
All Night, Lightning Flared Silently
Heroics
Teaching CPR
Women’s Clinic
The Dark Marks
Hooked Up
Alchemy
The Circulating Nurse Enters the Operating Room
Waking
It Was a Good Year for Dreams
Part II.
Becoming the Patient
Part III.
The Ant’s Reprieve
The Nurse’s Pockets
A Patient Tells about Her Suffering
Diagnosis HIV
Follow-Up: Women’s Clinic
Astronomy
I’m Afraid of the Brief Empty Space
Visiting the Lightning Struck
Distracted by Blackberries
On Call: Splenectomy
Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter
The Vocation of Illness
There Are No Poems at Hospital Management Meetings
Killing the Nurse in the House
I Want To Work in a Hospital
My Evidence
Twelve Thousand Years Ago
Hospice
Taking Care of Time
Finding What You Didn’t Expect
First Night at the Cheap Hotel
The Snake Charmer
Author’s Acknowledgments
Series Acknowledgments
