Daily, in Rochester, they stream into the Mayo Clinic. You can find every countenance here: confident to cataleptic, radiant to rictal; from stoic fortitude to baleful gloom; eyes, wet with hope or wide in desperation.
The motels and hotels, filled with polite impatience, seekers looking to shed their suffering.
And now we’re home. For my son there remains a hard road of recovery, duration unknown; but a fix was found, a cure, a surgical procedure so new that it’s been performed on only a handful of people worldwide. It boggles.
And it shifts something in you — being there, for what turned into a month of quietly managed panic, compounded by cross-border pandemic travel — flights, in the fullest sense.
All illness is uniquely experienced, yet all are bound by this universal drive, this will, this force that wants life, wants you to live.
Now a certain woman was sick and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was no better, but rather grew worse. When she had heard of Jesus she pushed through the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, If I may but touch his clothes, I shall be whole. And straightway the illness fled; and she felt in her body that she was healed. -Mark 5:25-29
Monolithic clinic of sickness-conquering science.
Gleaming machines calibrated for resurrection,
drugs named after gods,
procedures peer-reviewed and published by archangels,
inspiring the kind of hope reserved for Adam.
And there is hope, and there is healing.
And there’s a shop here with all kinds of wigs and hats.
And there are pharmacies near as any Starbucks.
And there’s a chapel to suit any faith but unbelief.
And there’s a 16-year-old blond girl
wrenched out of her chair by spasms,
the most beautiful hair you’ve seen,
tangled and caught in the wheels
as she makes impossible angles with her limbs,
her attendant calling for a bit of help — please.
And there’s the rest, with traveling companions,
like me, waiting, with my second-youngest,
trying to flag down help along these vaulted pedways.
Willing to go anywhere, willing to pay anything.
Willing to sit in any chapel and pray away every unbelief:
Dear Lord, may these tears turn to wine.
So lacking any hem to touch
I move toward You through language,
but I fear my language moves You away.
Nevertheless, I’ve read of Your famed mercy,
so let it rain, as it’s your fault, is it not?
that survival, like self-love,
is also symptom
begging for diagnosis.