You Work with Death by Maria T. Allocco

for her sister, a surgeon during this pandemic

I once asked you what it was like to watch people die. We were on our way to drink flights of wine. You described a man’s head filling with fluid until it was the size of a watermelon. We slowed on the sidewalk as you spread apart your hands to a size unimaginable, for a head. We stopped in our high heels. I didn’t know that could happen, you said. He’d flat-lined. We continued, as you spoke about a man in your trauma unit trying to kill himself. The second time he showed up like a ghost. The fifth and sixth visits, like a friend. The last time he stood in front of a truck, you said. You glimpsed my disbelief. On the highway, you clarified. As if I’d doubted his desire. I think that’s all I can take, I said. Okay, you picked up the pace—This place has really good flatbread. In med school, you took Mom to see the corpses. Maybe it was ‘family day’ at the hospital. Do you want to join? Mom asked, smiling over her shoulder. As if you two were going shopping at the mall. When we ever did go, we rarely chose our own clothes. You in those Minnie Mouse clogs, who would choose those? What’s it going to be like? I asked you. You told me the truth: Bodies on tables. Dead? I asked. Yes, you replied. You stood for hours over those bodies like our mother over the cutting-board, chopping at an even beat, a ritual sacrifice, every time. She could have been the doctor—instead, Mom chose it for us. Turning away from you, the eldest—I didn’t want to see the pressure you were under. I’m okay, I told her. When I was fourteen, my Honors Biology teacher shoved his fingers up the aorta of a cow’s heart squirting its juices onto the white lab coat he wore as if he were a doctor. Wrenching it away in his gloved hand, he held the heart dripping onto the floor. Can you have some reverence? I asked. He announced my ‘F’ for the experiment. Ordered me to sit outside. On the floor? I asked. No chair out there. He said he didn’t care. I set the curve; so, he gave away no ‘A’. Sent my wise-ass—weekly—to sit in the corner. Again and again, these men would send my heart to the slaughter: like you, I was our mother’s daughter. As a little girl in South Korea our mother aced every exam. Her teacher, a beast of a man, hit her. With a stick. At Johns Hopkins, so you’d be salutatorian, some guy rigged your final experiment. In Dallas, in your white coat and stethoscope, men asked to speak to the ‘real’ doctor. In New York, male doctors underneath you yelled orders. A man-made machine—keeping one alive—once broke. You ordered the man’s chest cracked back open to slip your gloved fingers in. Held his blocked heart in your hand. Pumped him back alive for twenty minutes—open palm—then fist—open palm—then fist—open palm—then fist. In a restaurant in San Francisco, I saw your hands glow. Oh my God, I said. Your hands. You hid the halos under the table. Your hands are God, I said. I can see the light around them. There was no doubt. I know what I saw. You channel God when you do surgery, I realized. Not everyone can see that, you replied, so quick to exchange compliments. Your white male colleagues booked you with their worst cases before they left on long vacations. You have no idea, you once told me of how it was to be mixed race Korean and the only woman surgeon. No one else could have done it, nurses told you. You once told me, in a whisper, you held the best record in the hospital. Patients returned with souvenirs for you. We last saw you in Vegas for Christmas. You bake our cookies, every year, like a mother. Sugar cookies like grandma’s, flattened under pressure. Sometimes we sing together as we clothe their fragile bodies with pastel-colored frostings. Jewel Cookies, your tradition: with their exposed red-jelly insides. Now, it’s Fall. I flew from New York—where I live—and ended up back in California. You said you felt relief. You worked on call the entire week, reusing the same mask. We sent you three N95s. You led a surgery; the patient tested positive. Now they’re filling the hospital. Your scrubbed and gloved hands—when free—sewed elaborate embroidery for every member of our family. You made me an angel, once. I cross-stitched you one in return, of Snoopy at a typewriter: Chocolate chip cookies are red. Chocolate chip cookies are blue. Chocolate chip cookies are sweet. So are you. You display it over your desk in every office. On the phone today, you said stitching skin is different. Something else heals it. You do your best, you said. God does the rest. Growing up, I remember you hiding in the closet. Once, I opened it. Curled up next to you. Made my body into a soft shell, too. What are you afraid of? I whispered. Death, you said. Please don’t tell mom and dad. I pinky-promised you. Now and always, your life is precious. How was it? I asked Mom, upon your return from the cadavers. She went straight to her room. It was too much for you, too. We both trained in Opera; you wanted to be a singer. Filling our house with a vibrato so thick and melancholic, your voice sounded as if it sang to the rain. When you were fourteen, you removed every shiny black seed from your share of watermelon—with a metal chopstick. Shared the fruits of your labor, with me. I accepted two cleaned cubes. Then, refused. You did all the work. I noticed you saved the sweetest ones for the end, and felt guilty eating them. So, I averted my gaze. I could feel you savor them. Now, I want to turn and see your face.

Maria T. Allocco is a mixed-race Korean and Italian genre-fluid writer accepted into both Columbia University’s Nonfiction and Poetry MFA programs. Her cutest heels stuck in-between cobblestones. Read more from her in The Rumpus. Social media free, reach her at: readingyourwords@gmail.com.