Kelley J. White
Drill: They lay throughout the corridors
in building C, the poxed, the exploded,
the burned, the silent motionless
victims of unknown blows and wars
we couldn’t name. We wore our new white
coats, necks draped with stethoscopes,
clipboards clutched to our too young
chests and at each station we made
foolish decisions, we failed to choose
the right medication, the right diagnostic
test, the level for triage. We doomed
our patients. Then they sat up in their
wounded diseased bodies and tore off
their plasters, awake and soon walking.
We’d failed to save a single patient.