Attending

From a Latin verb that means to stretch toward— the sunflower turning its whole gold face, a dog leaning its bodyweight at a door. The doctors I want to become are called attendings, and I used to hear it as mere presence: showed up, signed the chart. But no. They are named for the reaching. Three a.m. in Hinton James, and my roommate is talking the slow circles of someone deciding whether to say the true thing. I have no medicine. I have hot water for tea, a lamp, the good blanket, the whole stretched length of my listening. Somewhere ahead of me a woman in a white coat is wearing my face. Tonight I am just practicing the verb.