Universal Table

BETTY WAS A CONCERT PIANIST

I'm called to the farm. Betty quit eating.
Her son and his wife feel helpless.
When I lead myself to Betty's room, I pass
her Steinway covered with dust. She's curled
on her side in the dark, musty curtains closed
to late day sun. She admits she won't eat,
then chokes out the secret. When I confirm
her impaction and explain what I must do,
she submits to my instructions. While I dig
out the contents of her large intestine, I learn
she teaches with Chopin's etudes and likes
playing Liszt and Brahms from the portfolio
on the piano. When I've finished, she whispers
"Thank you" into the pillow and I close the door
on her dignity. The couple make supper
in the kitchen in their socks, barn boots
left outside the door. After my report
I look at photos of Betty and her husband
and of Betty in a concert gown. Before I leave,
I thank them for the glass of sherry.

"Come quick and see about the boy,"
he says. My ad boasts of house calls,
so I follow the man I recognize
as the Ferris wheel operator
at the summer carnival
over the river and up the mountain,
about half way to a hollow
off the road. There's an entrance
to what, exactly, I cannot tell.
I go in through a framed
entry to a cave
that stands for a house
and is clearly the home
for the mom and dad, and the boy.
Waiting in his jury-rigged chair, a pair
of blue eyes search mine, and he lifts
a crooked hand to shake. His buckled
spine allows his head to rest
on his hips. A twisted face
blows air as loud as a wind
tunnel. His tangled body defies
exam. Saw a doctor thirty years
ago. Science offered nothing,
so they've been making do.
Now the work of breathing's
too painful to watch,
so I arrive with nothing
much to offer but a few drugs
to ease him and them and me.

Worn as an empty coin sack,
she returns to the office
for itching. The salve I prescribed
hasn't helped. I can only guess
the sounds that start her days,
if she sets the table before eating,
the titles of the books in her trailer,
or what she feels on a moonless night.

My office note mentions the death
of her mother, the same visit the itching
started.

The skin at the base of her neck
is a washboard.

She asks if it came from
Mama gripping me around
the neck when I lifted her into the bath
every day.

He needs a prescription to help him sleep
and needs that dose of coke and booze
to let him do his job - twenty stories up
on rusted beams in another city.
He feels crazy coming down
from hours on a ledge of near falls.
His shift crew thinks the downers take off
the edge they need to balance. He knows this stuff
spikes his pressure, reminds me I treated
his wife's busted eardrum last week. But he needs
the work, needs the guts to go to work -
one month on, then two months off to plough
the ground, patch Daddy's fence, and track
the T-ball game his boy is pitching.
He needs a fix of normal for the day.

Where and how do we hold the fullness of the lives of people we see for a single purpose - like treatment?

How well do you feel this physician sees her patients?