No Pressure...

This is another poem that I submitted as part of my creative project for my Medical Humanities degree. Let me know what you think.

No Pressure

I’m beginning to realise how Atlas felt,

but instead of the world

I’m carrying the textbook of why and how,

memories of clinical skills seminars,

a box of pharmacology flashcards,

and somebody’s life.

 

I haven’t met them yet,

but one day I will ambush them with the algorithmic questions

of a fresh faced medical student.

They will mean something to the someone who will sit by their hospital bed and

try not to cry.

 

One day knowing this fact or that word –

the passage of this vessel,

the interactions of that drug –

will save their life.

For all our banter

our knees are beginning to buckle under the pressure

because it’s not just exam stress which keeps us awake.

One day we will help keep a life in this world,

but the next we may accidently take one away

and leave somebody to cry besides an empty hospital bed.