Off the Shelf is our section for creative works by medical students.
Writer-in-Training
Queen's University School of Medicine
Maggie Hulbert is a third year medical student at Queen's University School of Medicine in Kingston, Canada. In 2015, she graduated from Queen's University with a Bachelor of Science in life sciences. She is an active member of the medical humanities community and spent this past year developing the first Jacalyn Duffin Health and Humanities Conference. Her favorite writers include Danielle Ofri, Roxane Gay, and Samantha Irby. After graduating medical school, Maggie would like to pursue a career in Psychiatry.
If you come into the hospital room before she arrives, you might miss the telltale signs of her existence. They are subtle — a soft sweater thrown over a chair for those drafty hospital wards or an absurdly expensive vegetable tray from the café downstairs on the patient’s table.
Hearts that beat, / Turn into hearts that don’t.
Medicine is a march, but it’s not like Sherman’s to the sea. You don’t burn what you leave, and the sea is always just beyond the next hill.
A few winters ago, you called me after a ski accident and announced / “I have fractured my tibial plate.”
I had felt strange during the week leading up to the last ultrasound. Pregnancy is a roller coaster of sensations, but that week had been off a little. I barely noticed the ultrasound tech rubbing the cold, blue gel on my massive belly. I wanted to hear that sound: that quiet, pulsing sound of my baby racing to be born.
We work in a hospital / Faithfully / Like the tomato plant / Serving a garden community
Draped the head and steadied the bed / For the life-saving aneurysm clipping, / I stop thinking of my former life.
Your Smile / Wrinkles, / Where my jokes weren’t funny.
Filled with fear and pain but love and hate / To raise it alone since he never agreed
We stand beneath tin roofs / with raindrops on our lips / regret behind our eyes.
Deeper than its captivating shape / lies a greater purpose.
So, one way or another / I keep craning my neck / Looking up.
Contributing Writer
UC San Diego School of Medicine
Sarah S. Bassiouni is a first-year medical student at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. In 2011 she graduated cum laude from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry. Following this, she earned a Master of Public Health from the University of Michigan in 2016, and she has been a nationally certified phlebotomist (PBT(ASCP)) since 2014.
Sarah is passionate about eliminating health disparities both locally and globally. In her increasingly rare free time, she can be found writing in local coffee shops or hiking with loved ones. Sarah plans to pursue a career in academic medicine and global surgery.
