the metal box cuts through the hospital floors,
passengers, like potent medication, are released
to wade through hallways of blood choked with microbes,
to circulate into rooms/cells
all this an effort to stave off organ dysfunction, paralysis, coma, death
...
I strip away my uniform,
this thin cloth that weighs so heavily on me
with the responsibility of sustaining life-
but grief has already penetrated my skin
