Off the Shelf is our section for creative works by medical students.
Contributing Writer Emeritus
Michigan State University College of Human Medicine
Amanda Rutishauser is a Class of 2016 medical student at the College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University. She holds a BS in creative writing and microbiology from the University of Michigan and an MS in narrative medicine from Columbia University. She is the recipient of two Hopwood Awards and a William Carlos Williams Poetry award. She lives in West Michigan with her canary, Winston.
It was a Thursday in November, a day that felt like neither Thursday nor November a few weeks after my diagnosis that hadn’t seemed quite right, either, and here it was, on the page: the perfect trap, the perfect analogy. The patient (My Name No closing parenthesis. Now perhaps you’re one of those people who thinks that a missing closing parenthesis is just another typo, like a comma too few or too many. Perhaps you’ve …
“Good afternoon, Ms. Starflight. My name is Samantha Miller, and I am a student doctor working with Dr. Singh. I know you have answered so many questions in the past few hours, but do you mind if I ask you a few more?” Haha, ‘Starflight’, what an alias? How can these people be so uninhibited? Sometimes I’m not sure I’m even seeing real pathology. These people are just like me with a little less holding …
It was late, but she was still awake. Her mother had long since put her to bed and gone to sleep, but she was still awake. She crawled out of bed and tiptoed gingerly down the stairs. She didn’t turn on any lights, not wanting her mother to find her out of bed. She remembered to be especially careful on the last stair; it was creaky, and her mother’s bedroom door was only a few …
In that sweet primordial pause before knowing, before knowing you had that brilliant lub without whose cause my sinus would but sing for two. This small sound within the chamber mocks with flagrant range the mistook letter which does not describe the valve but more the knock of passion greater than mere muscle twitch. I have no way of knowing the golden disarray: how you would stare at tiring light pound the heart and dry …
At the start, it was Crisp Like the sound of a chilled cucumber Snapped in half briskly on a hot summer day Fresh In the novelty of all things A foreign state with foreign friends A foreign box to call a home. With time, it was replaced with The reek Of persistent formaldehyde Clinging to every pore And every item owned (despite relentless efforts to sterilize and compartmentalize) Its phantom stench in almost every aroma …
In the kitchen on the floor counting the tiles Again because the number slips Like all the other numbers slip Nothing can be proven this way or solved And when you call, you never mean to call the names you say are not the names You leave the windows open while the neighbors try not to see But sometimes it is pieced together A quilt like waves in a squall Electricity the thread A brilliant …
A piece of cloth decorated with cartoon animals or light blue patterns. It can vary in size but not style. It brings fear, uncertainty and vulnerability. It symbolizes dramatic, unwelcome changes in people’s lives. It is a hospital gown. Wearing a hospital gown—naked underneath—you, the patient, burst the bubble of privacy and emerge upon an unusual level of trust. You reveal your most intimate moments as you lead your physician into your world. You ask …
They say that when you sleep, you formulate memories. The last thing I see before I shut my eyes, are you part of them? You are my most intimate partner, The only one who shares my bed. What do you think of when you watch me sleep? Why do you not provide me with the safety I seek? I try so hard to hold you close, To fill in the holes, the gaps, in my …
Perhaps it was the persistent scare of the superbug that compelled the sun-riser to surrender to the notion that a coffee cup had been sullied by a minor fall: that the time perceived was unequal and unrelated to the speed of selfish microbes settling on the rim where his mouth was meant to be. The Unknown Soldier in his drowsy cadence assumed clumsy control over the machine while residents in loose blue pants were …
To have peeled back the sanguine face / The feat of passive genius now replaced / The strident stars succumbed to youthful grace / In half-scanned scalpels hot to nature’s plate.
Who stands, the crux left of the watershed bearing with the catarrh of the twilight that sinewy sight that strove of sound unsaid. What lip eschews the running Muse, its maw on spring’s aphasic drear; uncounted seer quietly tearing from the height, appalled and short-stocked sitting on the wrested watch arranging useful cogs of livid ash to pride the fire of its balderdash; gone home and back again, aroused to taste taller than grass and …
He stood at the window, gazing out into the bleak, foggy morning. His fingers slowly traced words and symbols on the frost and then quickly wiped them away. His hands looked different he noted—the skin like tissue paper, thin and crisscrossed with fine lines. His veins raised and pulsing. He clenched his fist, wincing at the stiffness. He couldn’t remember when his hands changed. When they were last full and firm, strong enough to pick …
Founder and Editor-in-Chief Emeritus
Albany Medical College
My name is Aleena Paul, and I am one of the founders of in-Training. I am currently a General Internal Medicine and Academic General Pediatrics Fellow at Hofstra/Northwell Health, where I am pursuing a Masters in Health Professions Education. My research interests include the use of the humanities for medical education, women's leadership in medicine, addressing health disparities through advocacy, and providing quality primary care medicine. I graduated from Albany Medical College in 2016 and subsequently completed a combined internal medicine and pediatrics residency at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
I currently serve as the editor-in-chief for in-House, the online publication for residents and fellows, and as a founding member of Pager Publications, a 501c3 non-profit literary corporation that curates and supports peer-edited publications for the medical education community.
In my free time, I enjoy skimming through The New Yorker, catching up on science fiction shows, wandering through museums and forests, and long conversations with friends.
