8/30 Children’s Hospital, Spring 2007

They tell you
not to come
if you’ve got a cold.
It’s very romantic to come and visit someone
while they are at their worst,
but if you carry anything other than yourself
you’ll kill them.

You eat some vitamins.
Drink some orange juice.
Drag yourself out there and question
every breath.

The thing is
when you carry nothing with you
you have nothing to talk about
other than the bare facts in front of you.
The kid in the other half of the room
is playing his hospital-provided playstation
and arguing with his father.
They are going to start treatment tonight--
the person I have come to sit beside
assures me in an undertone
that by the second day of treatment, that boy gets so quiet
that you miss this kind of noise.

In the kitchen
there is a gaggle of mothers--
they can be nothing else.
It has nothing to do with their jeans
or their cars.
It has to do with the way they hold their backs, and
the fact that they are here right now.

As I wait for the sink,
they chatter,
“Mine is juveline myleocytic.
What’s yours?”
as if their children
were merely byproducts,
hosts for the diseases that they beat back--

“This is her third round,” one says,
“She can’t keep anything down.”
And they all smile and nod
like this is normal.
Like this is what they expected
when they took it home from the hospital,
it came with a warning label
or an expiration date.

and I want to laugh
or break something
or make some sharp noise that will turn a thousand heads
say, “they are killing your children
and hoping that whatever is living in them
wherever it is living
will die first--”

is is insane,
barbaric.
If nothing else, the future of medicine
will look back and think--
this. This was madness.
Worse than leeches or black bile.

They have painted things on the wall.
Used bright colors.
Friendly nurses.
The person I have come to visit
tells me how one of them
just sat with him
and rubbed his back
while he threw up everything in his stomach
and then sat there and retched
the great nothing
as if his body
were trying to expel him,
as if he
were trying to escape.