...نعترف امام الله الواحد نعترف
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

Lady Lazarus- By Sylvia Plath
23-29 October 1962

A toi

Beyrouth. Cette passion fixe.
Tes images me brulent la retine.
et je marche... je marche...
la gorge nouée.
le pas lourd.
Je marche...
Tu me retiens.
Laisse moi!
Le coeur gonflé.
Laisse moi. Quitte moi.
Tu tires encore.
Quelques pas a reculons et je tombe...
Je me retourne. Je dois fuir.
Mais comment fuir?
Je ferme les yeux et tes images euphoriques peuplent mon inconscient.
Tu es partout. Tu habites mon corps fatigué.
Tu me rappelles sans cesse que je n'appartiens nulle part.
Tu laisses des cicatrices partout.
Une passion fixe...
Moi je t'aime.
Et toi tu craches, tu cries.
Alors je marche...
La gorge nouée.
Le pas lourd.
Leve toi Beyrouth. Ravale tes sanglots et leve toi.
Je t'aime.

Se retourner. Ultime erreur. Je vois Beyrouth. Comme elle est belle. Alors je comprends tout. Ma seule maison, c'est ma tête.

in the pursuit of happiness.
Enough.
Enough looking for that happiness.
Enough!

The ER Diaries

The power of medicine
This moment when you are talking casually to a patient and he suddenly arrests in front of you. Yes he dies. You find yourself alone in a closed room. You and a dead patient.

Not the kind they wake you up at night for in order to do a flat ECG.
Not the kind you expected to pass away and you now lay at rest.

No this one is young enough to die on you without any warning.
This one is talking to you, telling you how he just dropped his daughter off at AUB and he decided to pass by the ER for mild discomfort.
And there he goes. Sudden arrhythmia throws him into the tunnel. And you start pumping. Because that is what you do best.
10 seconds later the rest of the team arrives with a defibrillator and the patient is saved.

10 seconds of medicine. Real medicine. Automatism and adrenaline.
And he survives.
Endorphins storm.

30 minutes later you glance into the room to find his daughter kissing him, crying. She doesn't know that he arrested.
She doesn't know that had she been 5 minutes late in the morning her father would most probably have died in his car.
She knows she's hugging him again.
And she loves him...

On Setting Sail...

And the priest and priestesses said unto him:
Let not the waves of the sea separate us now, and the years you have spent in our midst become a memory.
You have walked among us a spirit, and your shadow has been a light upon our faces.
Much have we loved you. But speechless was our love, and with veils has it been veiled.
Yet now it cries aloud unto you, and would stand revealed before you.
And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

--The Prophet, by Gebran Khalil Gebran.