“Go with the nurse to the morgue. It’d be a good experience,” said the ER doc,
Knowing I was deciding whether medicine was for me.
I put a piece of Orbitz gum in my mouth (should I need to sustain my stomach),
Stretched a pair of gloves tight over my hands;
And off I went with the nurse to the morgue.
The ambulance arrived.
Like ants its crew came out carrying a body in a sealed bag
With “Vehicle Crash” written on the tag,
And deftly they placed it on the table in front.
“It’s a terrible one, this one,” said one, unzipping a seventeen-year-old boy.
A chill ran down my spine, holding me still at the very moment of his sight.
Torpid, pale with glass sprinkled all over him,
In a pool of his own blood was his ruptured head turned towards me.
With a mouth half-open, eyes sleepy but fixed on me,
Eerily he was communicating with me.
Lost, confused, I didn’t know what to do.
Helpless, almost insecure I felt.
How do I respond? What do I say?
I stopped chewing my gum.
That was all I could do: pay the respect.
The nurse searched his bloody pockets and found belongings—
Belongings that very much made him alive.
Pictures, a wallet, his driving license—he smiled—
And, a pack of Mint Orbitz—
Just like the one I had.
The nurse picked broken glass out of his mouth
And a white gum, too, red with blood, hiding beneath his floppy tongue.
I knew it was the gum he’d been chewing just minutes ago before the crash.
Just minutes ago, he was enjoying the very same flavor I was.
Images of him chewing that gum overflew my mind.
I couldn’t keep my gum any longer.
I ran out and spat it.
