The silver crescent of May’s first moon rises over the valley to the south of the
hospital where a silent ambulance waits below a sign in red letters: EMERGENCY
In an x-ray room at the end of a long hallway a technician in a blue smock assures
a white-haired woman that the fracture in her left foot will heal but not soon
Awaiting his turn with a therapist a man whose bride of sixteen months ago has left
him is enduring a panic attack and stares blankly at a wall in a crowded corridor
The father and mother of a boy who has been crying about a rasping pain in his lungs
are slowly being swallowed by their cell phones and slowly they disappear from sight
Two female EMT’s strap a roofer who has fallen off a ladder and fractured his pelvis to
a gurney and wheel him past security guards and sheriff’s deputies into the ambulance
The white-haired man of the white-haired woman waits on the far side of a waiting
room with a book and pencil and pen observing nurses pushing women in wheelchairs
Nurses give the roofer pills for pain and tell him that this hospital has neither doctors nor
equipment to treat his wounds but he will be taken care of in a trauma center in the valley
Crying softly, the boy lies down to sleep and a nurse covers him with a sheet as the white-
haired woman receives a metal four-legged walker to replace the foot she has broken
The ambulance with the EMT’s and the broken roofer pulls away from the curb and descends into freeway traffic toward the May moon crescent still rising in the twilight far to the south of the hospital.