The doctor studies the body as a bee does a flower. His voice, a creaking door, calls for such and such. Nurses flit around each other, economy in motion. They adjust straps—one here, one there, just enough slack for trauma.
One nurse swabs the patient’s temples with conductant; she secures the electrodes. She thinks she smells adrenaline, banking the body’s walls in frantic pursuit of escape.
The truth of the matter is that this entire menagerie marching through our brains is no more stable than a tottering cabinet of ceramic cows.
The doctor maneuvers knobs. He pushes a button with the precise assurance that comes from many years’ university training. It’s a learned touch, and the body jerks and spasms.
Meg Tuite
Meg Tuite’s writing has appeared in numerous journals. She is the fiction editor of Santa Fe Literary Review and Connotation Press. She has a novel “Domestic Apparition” (2011) available through San Francisco Bay Press and her chapbook, “Disparate Pathos,” (2012) through Monkey Puzzle Press. She has a monthly column “Exquisite Quartet” up at Used Furniture Review and the 2011 Anthology is available. Her blog: http://megtuite.wordpress.com
