To all my nurse friends, can you tell me why, when a patient asks you to stick her hand because her veins roll, why when there are sandwiches and orange juice for after and the twenty-five dollar parking will be free, when the line for the clinic was two hours and the children crying in the lobby made her think of her son, though he was no child when he overdosed, but still he was her child and she held his body waiting for the ambulance, why when she believes in Jesus and the love of the almighty Father even after he took her boy, or maybe the devil took her boy, or maybe we can say it was diabetes when it wasn’t, or who knows maybe it was because we have that in the family—the sugar, obesity, the rapid heartbeat—and why after she has given her time to the church and has come to donate platelets to those who need them, why do you give up after only three tries, why do you stick the needle everywhere but where she tells you it should go?

—Published previously in BOAAT Journal (November/December 2016); republished here with author’s permission

Bio: Sonja Johanson