Pain within the walls

Every patient that walks through our doors has walked a path of sorrows. The winding roads that have left scars within their skins and tears within the tapestries of their hearts start to harden into the walls they build around them. Our own fatigue simmers and smolders, forging the iron cast appearances of disinterest and coldness. Limiting transference, maintaining professionalism, they would say.

They build their walls one hospital trip at a time. "Your child is very ill" the foundation, "he may require surgery" the mortar, "he may have a brain tumor" the moat. With each surgery, each clinic visit, each MRI scan that shows possible progression of the disease they lay the bricks of their walls ever taller, ever stronger. Avoiding the compassionate, and oftentimes pitying looks of their neighbors and friends, as the constant reminder is too much to bear, has become cause to their construction. We're doing ok, they want to believe, to prove.

All the while the brutal work hours, unappetizing hospital food, empty chairs and empty tables sing the chorus of our misery. The job is painful, but our fatigue and sorrow must be left at the door. So we build our own walls to hide our souls. Inundated by neurosurgery, thoughts of quitting are commonplace. We ask ourselves if this is really what we want to do for the rest of our lives. The fatigue erodes the passion within, but our walls remain tall. We cannot show them weakness, they need us to be strong.

However, sitting there in their hospital beds, dawning hospital gowns with their backs open to the sterile air and their hearts open, thirsting for empathy, their defenses crumble. They lament the pain they've experienced, lash out with the frustration their roads have been littered with. We cannot comprehend their pain, as our dilapidated minds fail for want of reprieve and compassion themselves. We build our walls ever higher for fear that their weakness may overtake us, and in our ivory towers shiver in our own misunderstanding.