poem

10 Ideas for Medicine-Themed Paintings

1. Early morning hospital room. A doctor in a white coat and a patient. The elderly patient appears to be sleeping soundly beneath the covers. The doctor eyeballs the quickly cooling bacon on the patient’s untouched plate.

2. A doctor and a patient. A sixth floor hospital room with a view of the early morning highway. The doctor is staring at her phone. The patient is scrolling through her contacts trying to get her mother on speakerphone. 

3. Two doctors without white coats, a patient lying in bed and two unidentified visitors sitting on the couch next to the window. The visitors are just realizing they are in the wrong room. They haven’t seen their aunt in years. The resemblance is uncanny. The doctor is droning on about treatment protocols for congestive heart failure. The patient is smiling at her visitors. The visitors are waiting for a pause in the discursive monologue so they can leave.

4. A doctor and an entourage of enthusiastic medical students. A patient sitting on an exam table in a paper gown. The light is too bright. The gown is plain, without any designs or patterns. It isn’t clothing so much as a wearable napkin. One of the students has raised her hand to volunteer.

5. A doctor has pushed a computer on wheels into an exam room. His hair is cowlicked and slightly greasy. Around his neck is a stethoscope decorated with a stuffed koala bear figurine. The tiny room is populated by 9 people. A baby is nursing at the mother’s teat. Everyone else appears to be at least 75 years old. The mother looks about 40. This is the first grandson. 

6. Three doctors and a patient on the bed. The older doctor is gesticulating dramatically. The hand motions seem pornographic. The patient is watching the snow fall outside his window. The younger doctors make fists with their hands inside their pockets. 

7. A doctor and two nurses. A patient and her husband. The husband is holding his hat in his lap. Both nurses have tilted their heads in order to signal compassion. The patient pretends to not understand a word of what is being said. She looks toward her husband.

8. An intern and his chief resident. The patient is intubated and sedated. All the blankets and dressings have been pulled away. The abdomen is wide open, a thin sheen of plastic covering edematous loops of pink bowel. Stool is all over the sheets. The chief with a weary look of resignation. The intern, wide eyed and gaunt, looks like a character from a Boschian triptych. 

9. A nurse, a respiratory therapist and a vaudevillian clown. The patient is getting a breathing treatment. The clown is standing behind a cart full of paperback books. The patient points to an old beat up Louis L’Amour. The clown has a painted black tear beneath his right eye.

10. Two medical students, a beleaguered resident and an enormous bovine attending physician. The patient bed is empty, stripped of sheets. Blue vinyl air mattress gleaning with cleansing solution. The resident is on the phone trying to find out if the patient got sent to the ICU. The students are secretly lovers. Next week, the attending dies.

2/17/25