Kristin LaFollette
I PURSUED THE INTERNSHIP
because I wanted to be a surgeon.
At first, neurosurgery.
Then, orthopedics.
My father brought
a box of sawbones
home from work
and I used them to
study articulations &
imagine the synovial fluid
and pads of fibrocartilage
surrounding bones like
scaphoid, clavicle, and jaw—
I wanted to be a surgeon but there
was no remedy for what had been
done and what had been left undone.
In between injury and surgery, my father’s
own body required all the time and skill
& so I dug a hole, wrapped everything in
butcher paper and buried it, heaped shovelfuls
of cool soil on top until there was only tendon
bound to tissue bound to tendon—
I read that rabbit keepers
used to deal with this kind of thing,
the tearing and separating of filaments
from repetitive motion, always-warm hands
red and sharp from lesion without collagen synthesis.
I asked myself if I could maintain slow and quiet
precision with scalpel or hemostat, but I didn’t
even have the resilient and capable hands of the
rabbit keeper.
As the rotations began, as I moved from classroom to
clinic to hospital, I couldn’t begin to know what my
body would do, wounded flesh exposed to all that air,
tension and arrhythmia like heavy rain,
too wet and too loud to ignore—