Family Practice

Operating under the misconception that fear of vomit precludes a career in medicine, she will choose.

Not the terrifying trumpet of a patient retching — salivary and dental.

Just a queasy morning in her first trimester, or that time the baby threw up on her little pink sandal.

One day she will glance up to see a bitter old woman in the mirror.

She cannot, will not, become this.

She begins to awaken early and study ’til sunrise.

She tears through piles of thank-you notes for her newborn son’s gifts.

She opens her test scores, stunned to realize that these scores are going to medical school.

“Sometimes people cry when they’re happy,” her little girl will say.

In her third year of medical school, a young mother, newly postpartum, will miss the emesis bucket, expel sick everywhere, tear her incision.

Keep breathing, she will tell herself, the way you know: out and in.

Later, as they exchange filthy scrubs for clean, she and her resident will howl with laughter, gratitude, relief.