Ryan Boyland is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer, wanderer, doctor and amateur astronomer based out of Denver, Colorado. Boyland and his work have been featured on Button Poetry, Poets and Writers, Nebraska Public Media, with the Nebraska Poetry Society, and Larksong Writers’ Place, as well as in Rattle, Omaha Magazine, and The Cookout Literary Journal. Recordings and performances can be found on YouTube and TikTok. His poem “Omens” appears in the Fall 2024 Intima. Read more about his work at ryanboyland.com.
I leave the hospital, but the hospital doesn’t always leave me. I carry my stress in a thin band across my upper back. On the good days, I think about a patient I sent to a recovery center. I think I did a good job. On the bad days, I find myself scrolling for far too long, when another shift is coming in entirely too few hours, because, as I wrote in my poem “Omens,” “while I am awake, he is still alive.”
Medicine can feel isolating. We, clad in white coats or scrubs, siloed in different sections of our ivory towers or community hospitals, often feel that there is a singularity to our struggle. But in forums like Intima, when the walls between us are removed, we can see that we are not so alone. A quote often attributed (in recent years) to an esoteric Swedish proverb encapsulates this well: “Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow.”
The repetitive, intrusive, almost obsessive nature we sometimes think about the patients we had, the ones we lost, and the constant tug-of-war we have while trying to protect ourselves and acknowledge the humanity of those we care for, is reflected perfectly in Stefanie Reiff’s poem “Emergency Department.”(Spring 2015 Intima). Reiff describes the way it feels to leave the hospital with our patients in tow.
The most haunting lines were trying to maintain the humanity of the interaction between Reiff and the patient seen:
“So you saw retained products of conception? / I saw a foot”
We see people, bare, in extremis, navigating a knife’s edge between life and death. We stabilize them. It is difficult, but there is solace to be found in the community established through our shared efforts to provide the best care we can.
Last week I had a good day. I spoke with a friend about some difficult cases and shared something that warmed my heart. A little old lady in a car accident with a smile as wide as the sky had pulled me close as I helped move her to her bed. She told me to come closer, then surprised me with a kiss on the cheek. She thanked me for taking care of her. When it was time for her to head home, her daughter thanked me as well.
That night, when I left the hospital, my shoulders were a little lighter.
Ryan Boyland is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer, wanderer, doctor and amateur astronomer based out of Denver, Colorado. Boyland and his work have been featured on Button Poetry, Poets and Writers, Nebraska Public Media, with the Nebraska Poetry Society, and Larksong Writers’ Place, as well as in Rattle, Omaha Magazine, and The Cookout Literary Journal. Recordings and performances can be found on YouTube and TikTok. His poem “Omens” appears in the Fall 2024 Intima. Read more about his work at ryanboyland.com