Here is a second poem from the “archives” sent to me by my former English prof. What was interesting reading it was that, at the time, it was written, with the gender of the doctor being female, the poem shook the reader awake to the possibility of a female surgeon. There were not many female surgeons at the time. There are still not many. My gender is female and this was written from my point of view. I did consider being a surgeon, but the environment was extremely hostile for women at that time. My female classmates and I were still girls, barely out of our teens when we graduated. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but I couldn’t have gone into surgery because I had already experienced too much toxic masculinity for one lifetime in medical school.
Poem #2
Third night on call
and the young doctor
cannot move out of the sterile field.
Caffeine-nerved, her steady hands
pass over the abdomen, touching here,
prodding there. Eyes catch
the grimace,
but only as
something physiological,
It is pain – not more –
But fifty-three hours ago
she would have seen more.
Now her hands, having found
pulses at wrists, linger
as though remembering that other hands
should be held.
The message from the hands
moves something in the mind
and a smile comes to the face
drawn with fatigue.
Grateful eyes respond –
one tear –
and the knife-bearing hands
touch one cheek
reminding
the victim of their oath.
(This is an image of an operating theatre in the Women’s Pavillion at the Royal Victoria Hospital. This image is from the Montreal Gazette.)
