A Bright Sadness
When I’m not on call at the big hospital, I work at the Cancer Center, which is an outpatient facility where patients receive chemotherapy and radiation. When I first arrived, my boss told me to make rounds in the infusion room and the lobby. I walk into the infusion room, a large open area with chest-high walls dividing each patient’s cubicle. Each person waits in a chair while the medicine drips through IVs with the slow, pained rhythm of a leaky faucet. The nurses use double gloves when hooking up their bags of chemo. The medicines are so poisonous that there is a whole protocol—several layers of nesting plastic buckets—for the event that the chemicals leak. Some of the patients fiddle with crosswords or knitting. Others bring a friend or relative and huddle around their little TVs. Others just watch the room, their eyes always one step behind the nurses who flit from patient to patient. I survey the room for the most approachable patient and introduce myself to a middle-aged woman in...
Read More
