I had just exited the restroom when the clamoring voices of several young children filled my ears. There were four of them. They ran wildly, everywhere. I scanned the area, certainly a parent is nearby; surely they cannot be just unattended like this…

Then I saw her. She weakly reached out toward her rambunctious brood, mumbling softly and incoherently. In a tattered carrier strapped to her chest, a red-faced infant wailed. The woman had a haggard look about her and dark smudges beneath her eyes. Greasy hair kept falling in her face.

Then a forlorn, guttural noise escaped her mouth. She suddenly fell back against a nearby wall and slowly slid down to the floor. She began to weep loudly. Her sobs and howls joined along with the squalling infant on her chest. She and her baby became a symphony of human misery.

She was partially blocking the walkway. A few onlookers spoke harshly to her as they stepped over her legs:

“Don’t breed ‘em if you ain’t gonna take care of ’em!”

“Ever heard of birth control?”

“Oh, give me a break, lady…”

Fifteen-year-old me looked around.

Someone should help her…

I looked around awkwardly for an adult to offer aid. I found not one friendly face, only strangers’ expressions of shock and disgust or averted gazes.

I’m just a kid. I don’t know what to do.

Maybe she was a single mom… Maybe she was simply overwhelmed… Maybe she was suffering from postpartum depression. I will never know exactly what was happening with her that day. My point is, it doesn’t matter the circumstance. I had a chance to be a comfort and blessing to a stranger and I opted out.

This is where my shame lies: my inaction. Even if I was unsure what practical help I could offer, I could have (at the very least) sat there on the floor with her. I could have let a hurting person know they were not alone on a bad day. But I chose to turn and walk away, with an empty prayer on my lips that help may soon find her.

I could have been her help, her comfort, her answered prayer… but I walked away.

I will carry this shame with me always.

X,

You chided me. Said I spent too much time on that “shitty app”. What did you call it? “like Twitter and Facebook for wannabe writers”? That is was nothing more than a social media dumpster fire, “full of drama” and for “mediocre talent”. You called me naïve and too quick to join the “clique”. You regarded my interaction with other writers with utter disgust and jealousy.

Your words stung. I’m not sure if it hurt more because of coming from a lifelong friend, or from a fellow writer I had always respected. You being both, it certainly hurt. But this is not the reason for my email. I want to let you know I am leaving everything behind in order to focus on my writing.

First, I want to tell you ‘thank you’. Thank you for fortifying my suspicion that I may indeed have a story within worth telling. Without your disparaging words regarding my talent and social habits, I may have never taken this drastic step of cutting ties and pursuing seclusion. Your harsh words have ignited a fire in me to write like I never have before. Thank you.

Second, goodbye. Do not reply to this email. You will not hear from me again. I am excited for life’s upcoming chapters; I feel they will be some of my best yet. Our friendship is now a mere footnote of regret in a book forever shelved. Be well.

Wannabe writer no more,

Mariah

Tell me what's wrong, what the issue is,

Why you're upset with me, mister, miss,

Lull me back into that eternal bliss,

With inevitable assurance nothing's amiss.

Tell me what's wrong, what I can fix,

If you're built of stone, I'm made of sticks,

I need my surroundings to be of sturdy bricks,

So I can mend, mediate, spread the two Twix.

Tell me what's wrong, what I should do,

Your exasperated sighs might do it for you,

But you can't read my mind, of course this is true,

So why don't you get I can't read yours, too?

pen to paper, try to

write. convince yourself

you've got the right

as if you are

the kind or type who

makes the words fall in line,

besides

all those mistakes mean

finding out the truth that's in your

mind & whether

you have

got the

time to

ponder what you've learned or

wonder if it's worth it

they'll be

back to tell you:

take what's yours, don't

wait, more

mistakes are

ways we grow and so

make

more, don't

pour another cent

into what they say or do

until you know that

you're the type of you

that's worth some

saving.

1. Don’t think, just write—look back later and gather ideas from there. Our best potential is hidden deep within the unconscious recesses of our minds.

2. Write everything that comes.

3. Keep a dictionary and thesaurus nearby. Every word carries a slightly different meaning, flavor, tone, and it’s crucial to piece together the right ones to convey our image.

4. Read hard books. Exposure to hard, eloquent writing with hard, eloquent words teaches our minds to think naturally on that higher and more difficult level.

5. When faced with a serious bout of writer’s block, look around you for inspiration. Everything has a life, a history, something that makes it

uniquely it. Ponder that.

I landed a gig as cartoonist for my hometown newspaper, pathetically named The Advertister. The Editor was super excited, and new. My written proposal to send in some cartoons weekly was well received, and I relished the idea of freelancing in this small capacity, hoping to build on the capital. I had, accordingly, no contract, but a lot of free range. I made sketches for me, then sent in two potential finished compositions, and time and again one or the other was accepted, sometimes even both, with week's delay in publication, as the limit was one per week. A crisp 25-dollar check came in the mail promptly the next day after the work was featured in the paper. Yay!

Not much, in the grand avenue, but a cheerful lightness of step in the right direction... Now to the part where it gets dirty. After 7 or so happy such weeks, I received an email from the Editor, in odd wording that the Owner of the paper had received interest from another party... my heart sank. I saw the work of the Other printed shortly the next day, my own (with no false modesty) doubtlessly superior illustrations rejected. I had been extremely cautious. I had curbed my satiricism to the most benign commentary. I had resorted to serving the perceived clientele with "good taste." So, I knew it was nothing that I had opinionated. The Owner of the paper had apparently seen the family Name.

That was blacklisted, a history unrelated to myself except by a dis-nepotism. You see my parents had worked for the same paper a decade earlier. Father as a photographer and Mother covering the local beat with incisive criticism, that was soon suspected to have been Ghost written by Father; and indeed so it was, but nobody could prove it. Nevertheless, the duo had to go, because they were undermining the comfortability of local scoundrels and operatives. They were essentially barred from any such work, by reputation. And I by association was a potential latent threat.

It was an interesting stint, a glimpse through a dirty window of local news.

05.06.2023

Unsavory job challenge @Prose

I do,

I do think about you.

In parking lots

in grocery lines

in coffee shops

in dinning halls

in podium stands

in traffic jams.

During long exams

during long rides

during warm hugs

during cold stares

during painful sweat

during cheerful tears.

I still find you in the warmth of my bed,

in the spilling of the milk.

I haven't forgotten you,

I swore I never would, and

I mean to be a woman of word.

So dear little me,

I'm making this for you.

I'll make our dreams come true.

It's the scariest time for a shiny, brand new doctor: July 1, the day after four years of residency and the first day as an unsupervised doctor (or, actually, less supervised). You're thrown into the emergency department for the first time--let go--released--at large, daring disease or injury or mystery illness to best you.

At the beginning of that first day you feel ready, that you know everything. At the end of that first day, you feel completely unprepared, and you don't really know anything.

It's the scariest time for a patient: July 1, when shiny, brand new doctors will engage with them willy-nilly, whether they know the significance of that date or not. If you're going to get sick, you really should wait until June 30, the day before the most experienced doctors leave to hang up their shingles. (They don't do that anymore, but they still leave, looking for a life.)

"So, what's the grossest thing you've ever had to do?" I was asked once.

We have an abbreviation in medicine--TNTC--meaning, too numerous to count. As in, How many malignant cells on the slide? TNTC.

The grossest thing I've ever had to do? Seemingly impossible, because of TNTC. Yet, there is one particularly gross thing I did one day that has stayed with me. (Details to follow.)

I was on the internal medicine rotation, just finishing my rounds--12 patients to a ward. It was the winter, which means that I went 9 weeks never seeing the sun--12 hours each day, arriving before dawn and leaving after dusk. A smarter doctor would have taken vitamin

D supplementation.

I was so ready to go home. The early darkness outside made me feel I was shortchanging myself my time away, so I hurried out. As I passed the door of another ward, I heard her.

"Oh, Doctor, please, please..." and it faded to crying. First with sniffles, then overt weeping.

It wasn't my ward. It wasn't my patient.

I engaged my tunnel-vision and walked past. "Oh, please." I stopped.

Wasn't I a doctor? Didn't I write in my admission essay I wanted to help people?

I turned. I returned to the door and looked in. She was in the first bed, the better part of 500 pounds of postop female.

"Yes," I asked tentatively.

"I'm so blocked up. It hurts so bad. Please help me. My bowels--" and then she let out a yelp of pain. There's suffering, and then there's suffering.

"Call your nurse for an enema, " I offered.

"No, they did that. Twice. It's right there, but it's backed all the way up and--Oh!" she screamed.

I stepped in and retrieved her chart. Postop gallbladder, 5 days after, and loaded with narcotics ever since.

Here's a little science: narcotics slow up the bowels. They constipate. If it continues without some sort of resolution, a fecal impaction grows, making the problem worse.

It gets worse: the bowel wall is weird. It only has pain nerves for distention. You can cut it, burn it, laser it, even remove it...nothing. But if it distends, all hell breaks loose (as opposed to the impaction, which doesn't). This is why babies cry bloody murder when just a little baby fart tries to cross those little baby bowels. We are gas-producing animals, and when there is no way out, the gas begins distending. It won't go back up, because sphincters make bowel traffic one-way.

If the impaction isn't dealt with, rarely, the bowel can even burst, resulting in peritonitis or death. But before all that, it hurts. It hurts really bad--in fact, unimaginatively bad. There is colic, and then there is colic. On a scale of 1-10, it's, right, TNTC. You even wouldn't want Hitler to have this kind of colic. (Well, maybe--I'll have to think that one over.)

So, should I be a shit bigger and harder than the one she couldn't pass and just leaver her? Not my problem? That's when I realized, if I don't do it, no one else will. She will lie in agony all night and maybe be given just what she didn't need--more narcotics.

I knew what I had to do, and she had a pretty good idea what I had to do.

I found gloves and approached her with gloved hands raised. (It's this thing we do.) She raised her knees. I used both my hands to serially move back the fat folds on her thighs and slowly made progress to her anus. A long and winding road. Once I found it, I looked back up at her.

"Please," she pleaded. For her, it was an emergency. "Please," she repeated more frantically.

And I did. I digitally explored her rectum and dug out the TNTC rock-hard fecal boulders piecemeal. I made progress slowly but surely. Finally, I must have struck gold, because a huge whoosh of gas decompressed her abdomen.

I rolled up the sheet under her, top and bottom and side and side, making a tidy little basket of surprise for the linen people.

I looked at her again, and she was crying in gratitude. She thanked me TNTC. She asked my name. (But did I really want to be the go-to guy to dig out her impactions from now on?) I gave her my name, and I could tell by the way she asked she would never forget me.

And I would never forget her. Gloria was her name.

So, when I'm asked what's the most unsavory thing I've ever done in my profession, it's Gloria. And as disgusting and gross as it was, it's also the thing in my profession of which I'm the most proud. I had stepped in when no one else would. I was true to my admission essay.

All the doctors who had deserted her--even her doctors--are the shits in Medicine--the hard, rocky shits--that cause the moral impactions of the profession. For them, no enema is strong enough; and for folks like Gloria, no enema is worthy.

I could do this-

or that-

or switch off

Multi-tasking,

my elusive,

tempting vixen

I'm so tired

without having accomplished

a single useful thing

It was a shit job. Quite literally. I was a 16 year old girl, and did have “farm experience“ as I said. I failed to mention that my dad had a small fruit tree farm, not the kind with horses and barn animals. I thought “yard work” and “spending time with horses” sounded like a nice summer job. Who cares if I have to wake up early! It was $20/hour cash, and to a 16 year old that was pretty good money.

I came wearing gardening gloves and jeans, and happily met with my best friend’s mom who gave me the job at 5:30 in the morning. I would be taking care of their race horses. She handed me a shovel and a wheelbarrow, and we started walking to the fields. I wonder what this is for, I thought. I must be pulling weeds. “I’m kind of behind. I keep meaning to get to this, and can’t by the time the day is done. I’m so grateful for your help. Anyway, you’ll see.”

“Don’t be intimidated” she added. “They can be intimidating.”

As I entered the horses‘ fenced in pasture they cautiously walked towards me. I held still and calm to show I could be trusted. They grew bigger as they got closer. Before I knew it I was face to chest with a mammoth horse! He was so tall my head came to the bottom of his chest (I’m not exaggerating). I had been around horses before, and this was no horse! This was some genetically altered mutant horse. What were they feeding this thing?? I didn’t know they even came in this size. I said “Hey, it’s ok buddy”, in my most soothing voice, to relax him and make him feel comfortable with me. He kicked over the wheelbarrow hard and knocked it over. I gulped. Glad that wasn’t my head.

More than a little intimidated (okay, mildly shaking), I cautiously slipped by the side of the wheelbarrow and dragged it towards me and away from said monster horse. I set it upright and looked ahead of me, down the field a bit. I understood the mission now. “Shit duty”. Bummer. “Well, I’m here now,” I thought and wheeled the battered barrow over to the big open shed. It had three walls, and a forth open, and I realized it served as a giant outdoor porta-potty for the three massive horses that looked like they just stepped off set from a photo op with Muscle magazine. The smell hit me hard like Dorthy’s house falling from the sky. How long has it been since this was cleaned? I held my nose for a second’s relief. The shit was a foot deep, and had both a soft warm and stinky layer and hardened hard to shovel layer. I looked at my sneakers and said good bye. You two have served me well, but I know there will be no coming back from this one.

Two hours later, in 90 degrees and 100 percent humidity, I leaned onto my standing shovel exhausted and looked at my progress. I made a dent in it. There was no way I could finish shoveling out all of the manure by end of shift. I was only due to be there a couple of hours. Sore from shoveling and dehydrated, sweating like a fat rich man with a cigar in a sauna, I called it a day. “$40. Wow.” Forty dollars suddenly didn’t seem like that much money. I stuck it out for the summer, but it really was the shittiest job I have ever had.