Nonfiction
by Eric Jones.
“Pain made me a precocious student of time, each middle ear infection a new lesson on the uncatchable instant.”
by Laura Johnsrude.
“I spent a lot of time thinking about blood during my training years—hoping I could get enough of it, wondering which vein would yield the best supply of it, wishing the patients had more of it, calling the blood bank for a bag of it.”
by Trish Travieso.
“I was twenty-three years old the first time I saw my father wearing a dress.”
by Nadia Ghent.
“One afternoon, after my mother had fallen ill for the fourth or fifth time, I pulled out all my eyelashes, one by one. I was thirteen. She had gone to the hospital in the middle of the night with my stepfather—a psychiatrist, but not hers—and after I came home from school that day, nothing was ever the same.”
by Samuel A. Autman.
“Television had always been a perfect distraction from our family’s drama and trauma, soothing us more than our Baptist faith.”
by Barron Lerner.
“To be ill is to be displaced—displaced from health, displaced from one’s former self, displaced from the community of the well.”
by Jeremy Griffin.
“Despite my respect for my students, I was afraid of them. Afraid of the way they watched me as I delivered a lecture, afraid of whispers, silences.”
by Rafael Campo.
“It is not unusual, after I’ve given a poetry reading, for some impossibly young writer from the audience to remark over the post-literary pretzels and Diet Coke, “Wow, your stuff is really depressing.’’
by Shanda McManus.
“My office is quiet except for the noise I make: the click of the light switch, the hum of the computer, the crinkle of my paper gown as I unwrap it. I pull on my PPE—gown, gloves, mask, and goggles—makeshift protection as I evaluate patients for suspected Covid infection.”