like dew to the pasture

I lifted my gaze towards the horizon and marveled as I watch it change its capricious hues. The sun, forlorn, bids the world farewell as it slowly, stealthily stole away, fleeing from my sight. Then I struggle to look as far as my eyes could see and behold before me Your breathtaking work – the limpid stillness of the ocean, the grace of birds in circling flight, the glorious sunset. All these you made. All these you proffered before this undeserving.

Before me spreads proof of your immense power, the infinitesimal greatness, the grand promise I could never quite fathom. Here lies all beauty that at once terrifies and stills me. Your ways, strange as they are, heals, enfolds, then wounds.

I dip my hands in the crystal waters and tried to clasp it by my palm for a brief moment. I saw myself reflected there, a perfectly deflected imperfection, illumined by the dying embers of the setting sun. And all seems well in the world.

Yet like always, contentment and constancy are no unsevered twins to me. Faithless as I am, the magic fails when the lights dim. Once the curtains are drawn over, I see no more. Water is just water, and life surrenders to a stultifying sea of ordinariness. I lost you and I lost me amidst the perfunctory and mundane – of keeping things together, the leaden weight of little worries and hollow concerns.

And I gradually lose hold of the sublime.

Yours is a love imperceptible and subdued, I demand  definition. I am blind to your little bursts of radiance, I exact concrete deliverance. My senses fail me, I know no substance beyond these temporariness of forms.

You are subtle, I do not feel you. You are too quiet, I forget you are there.

it’s been awhile since my last mind-numbing, limb-bending, adrenaline-pumping toxic stint.

the side-perks & privileges (no matter how deservedly earned) of "seniority" in our unit never quite sat well with me. i think that somehow (and this is true even in other aspects of life), having it easy lulls you to complacency, breeds in you a fall sense of hubris, & deceives you into believing that you are a demi-god of uber competency. this is why i don’t really mind much when i get swamped with ‘toxic’ cases. because the experience can be at once humbling & self-affirming, with all its gory glory. it reminds you that you are flawed, and also that you are capable of so much more than you give yourself credit for. so i tell myself.

after a long stretch of humdrum duty, i had another taste of the ICU extra-extra challenge d other day. Chua, Suan* gave me a mega-dose of ‘clinical chaos’, coming in septic & virtually unresponsive to any & all medical tricks my harassed MROD could conjure. Hypotensive? Fast drip 10 liters of IVF!! (hyperbolically speaking) haha. What can I say, our mds. are fluid-challenge junkies. Minutes later I see cutesie pink frothy stuff happily bubbling up & down my ET tube. Yahu, pulmonary edema is that yu?!! Dang.

The cardiac monitor is set such that the screen icons turn red when parameters turn abnormal. My entire monitor is ALL glowing red, vermillion scarlet rouge, red-eyed monster,redness redness everywhere.. Sauron Sauron is that you? Lintek.

HR 160s, I push Adenosine like Flash would, flipped up Suan’s mottled arm & flushed & flushed & feel quite smug about my exceptional technique…nothing happened. The OC in me worried. Did I get it in in less than 3 seconds? is my iv out? is this a fluke? a joke?

And Rody Sy is watching. His sharp, chinky eyes watching, watching the transpiring of nothing.

My patient will die. Or I might.

I tell myself that this too would end. And it did. Soon enough. Chua, Suan is dead and left me a vicious viscous green (Pseudomonas, Klebs,Alpha-Strep, who knows) souvenir to remember him by.

  *patient confidentiality teeheee