Th3 Simple Questions

SHE COAXES THE HUMAN SPIRIT

WHO IS SHE?

She is a MD, therapist, mother, but in the pre-scientific era she would have been the Hermit in her cave or the Wise Woman in front of the fire. Today the fire into which she gazes is a medical records computer screen. She is the Oracle who consults her runes, the bones, the stars, the history, the lab results, her notes and her heart. She turns her prophetic gaze inward on herself and recalls the patient’s rattling chest, the general strength or weakness, fever, and clammy touch. She sees each prior check-up and looks into her mind's eye and sees us, her patients, in detail. She fields a call from her daughter and discusses their dinner plans. Then she adjusts herself inwardly and comes to the exam room.

WHY IS SHE HERE?

She walks through offices, ERs, waiting rooms, quiet or noisy, dressed in her white lab coat. She pauses at the doorknob to the exam room and rallies her weariness into a sense organ which she will focus on the patient. There is nothing that passes this good woman’s eye. Nothing too trivial for her to consider. She will take in each of us and compare it mentally with her inner review, looking for changes. In this wounded world, the quiet power of her eye and her stern gaze gives comfort to the frightened, courage to the dying, and careful attention to the Willy Lomans who whine and carp about declining forces, failure or change.

WHAT DOES SHE WANT?

In her childhood days she coaxed frogs into jars and yellow perch onto hooks. Her patients too are wild things and shy. Some put on brave faces. Others seek sympathy. Some angrily deny their fate. The exam room reeks of regret. Holding powerful emotions and great science on some unseen scale of destiny, she seeks to coax the human spirit in each patient into full flame. She starts with small questions, “How are you today?” and listens. Agonizingly slow she can hear the heart creaking open or if the human thing is unable to arise, she is prepared to retire in hope, pain, fear or grief in her solitude.