Poem: I Stepped Past Your Room Today

I Stepped Past Your Room Today
- Gerry Greenstone, M.D.

I stepped past your room today
Rushed to a crammed office
Rather than endure
The eerie calm of Palliative Care
It’s been three days now
Since I visited you
And that’s not good.

I was there from the beginning
When we split your belly
To find cancer
Erupting everywhere
The liver’s glistening surface
Ridged and spotted as the moon.

Then came the radiation
Malignant clusters beamed with cobalt
Bombarded with pions
In a cellular explosion.
And chemotherapy
Specialized molecules
To invade you like tissue
And work their complex chemistry.

But in the end
Our white-coated arsenal
Was powerless
Against the long trajectory
Of disease.

Now you lie there
Shriveled husk of a man
So pale and trembling
With barely enough weight
To press against the sheets.

In the harsh glare of those white sheets
I see the impotence
Of myself as a physician
Whose energy is aimed
At cure and renewal.

Can you understand
What it means to face you
Like this,
Your courage against my fear?

Let me not lose sight
Of what you once were
And still are
A man and a father
Who did the things fathers do
Watched your daughter at ballet
Her leaps and pirouettes
Cheered your son at his soccer games
Stood shivering in the rain.

To respect your humanity
To preserve your dignity
Because if I can hold you clear enough
There’s nothing more to fear.