Stefano Byer, M1, Class of 2022
Between my fingers and my desk
The computer in classroom rests
Snug as a phone in pocket
Outside my classroom a cacophonous sound
Healers and sick each dressed in their gown
My attending listening, I look down
Clinic’s door clinks
Two gowned men – separated by one stethoscope
Listening to each other
Disease and knowledge, aged 20 years or more
Meeting today – with minutes to implore
My attending spends his day listening,
more than any other that walks through the hospital door
Once I carried him a coffee, the lid kinked askew
He stepped to his office, drank briskly and gulped with a few
Then fell right to listening and
Listening patiently
Heaving differentials over his shoulders
Rattle tap click, EMR
The sterile squelch and slap of sanitizer
Out extended, wrapped by my unwrinkled thumb
Christened by neophyte sweat
I, listening for heartbeat but
unsure of which one
Stooped by the ill
of more knowledge than the books
So, for now, I have no ears to follow them
Between my fingers and my desk
My computer in classroom rests
I’ll listen with it, for now
Based on the poem “Digging” by Seamus Heaney, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1995
Med Intima 