Location
Third Degree Glass Factory
Start Date
12-4-2023 6:30 PM
End Date
12-4-2023 9:30 PM
Description
Judson Ellis is a first-year medical student. He shared an emotional story about interactions and family in the emergency room.
Excerpt:
The social worker is just beginning her 12-hour shift. I wonder what it must be like to labor so constantly within the suffering of people you will never see again.
I always imagined the first healers in prehistoric societies. How they must have cared only for people they’ve known their whole lives. They must have held their patients, loved ones, daily – eyes and hands scanning every inch of their healing bodies, feeling a broken finger melt back into place like clay, moment by precious moment.
I moved to St. Louis as a stranger. Everyone I see, even classmates, is a mystery to me. I try to share some moments of conversation with the social worker, but her mood is raw and hurried. I follow, watch her shuffling notes between doctors, nurses, and police. I do not try to stop my mind from wandering home, to my own family. At midnight, I imagine myself a child, looking up the treetop legs of my parents. I imagine myself falling asleep without them, playing through scenarios of who might take me in if they were gone.
I am shocked back to the present when we learn these two girls aren’t alone after all.
Story#12 - Crash on a Friday night
Third Degree Glass Factory
Judson Ellis is a first-year medical student. He shared an emotional story about interactions and family in the emergency room.
Excerpt:
The social worker is just beginning her 12-hour shift. I wonder what it must be like to labor so constantly within the suffering of people you will never see again.
I always imagined the first healers in prehistoric societies. How they must have cared only for people they’ve known their whole lives. They must have held their patients, loved ones, daily – eyes and hands scanning every inch of their healing bodies, feeling a broken finger melt back into place like clay, moment by precious moment.
I moved to St. Louis as a stranger. Everyone I see, even classmates, is a mystery to me. I try to share some moments of conversation with the social worker, but her mood is raw and hurried. I follow, watch her shuffling notes between doctors, nurses, and police. I do not try to stop my mind from wandering home, to my own family. At midnight, I imagine myself a child, looking up the treetop legs of my parents. I imagine myself falling asleep without them, playing through scenarios of who might take me in if they were gone.
I am shocked back to the present when we learn these two girls aren’t alone after all.
Comments
Access limited to Washington University in St. Louis campus.