The Beat Goes On

The man steps up to the podium.  He is no longer a candidate.  His voice is hoarse and cracks as he begins to speak.  One can only imagine what the last twenty four hours have felt like.  Heart racing, pulse thumping, and the lack of sleep have taken their toll.  The victorious pause will be momentary.  Today is a fleeting oasis, the challenges of tomorrow a certainty.

My body crumpled underneath a blanket, I try to keep my eyes open with the rest of the nation.  The daunting hurdles of the last call cycle still washing over my listless spirit.  I saw thirty five patients.  Some by choice, most by necessity.  As a nation travelled to the polls, I rounded in the hospital.  I tended to diabetes, hypertension, colds, and various other illnesses in the office.

I helped two patients die.  Or more accurately, I struggled to use primitive tools to enhance the quality of what little life was left.  I talked to their families, huddled with the nurses, and signed all the orders. 

I answered phone calls.  In the exam room, in the car, in the bathroom.  I signed papers, hundreds and hundreds of papers.  So many papers that my hand began to cramp and my signature became an eligible scrawl.

I will awake tomorrow and do it all again.  The pundits will speculate, a president will return to the business of a nation, and the people will go back to the minutia that fills our overcrowded lives.

And the beat goes on.