We walk around the pond

this patient, diagnosed with schizophrenia,
and he feels he doesn’t have schizophrenia,
and I tell him right now we’ll just walk
around the pond, that it’s that simple,
no worries about diagnoses or mis-
diagnoses or missed goals or hopes
or dreams, or mistakes, just this soft fog,
these cute ducks, this slight mist, a bounding
squirrel to our right that jumps onto a tree
trunk and sneaks around the back, peeking
at us. And we walk. That simple. Patient.

I’ve had dissociation

but I don’t say this to the patient,
another patient, so many patients,
this patient, who was just recently

married, this patient who is between
my last patient and my next patient,

the cloud outside my window looking
like a patient in the sky, and I was told
by my old PTSD counselor to put my

worries onto clouds and let the clouds
slowly take them away, and now I’m

a PTSD counselor, and an old prof
telling me that people with PTSD
understand people with PTSD even

more deeply, and there’s a loud
announcement on the speaker,

and the client talks about leaving
his body, how he goes to a brook
in his mind, looking down at his

body, and I don’t tell him this is
something I’ve experienced, and

that, yes, it’s a body of water for
me as well, but instead I’m quite
quiet, like a still lake. The patient

asks if I understand what he is
talking about and I say, “I do.”

In the COVID wards

a patient died every other day,
a day with no death followed
by a day of death followed by
a day of no death followed by

another day, and it went on
that way for months, with fever
and coughs of all shapes and sizes,
and lungs that stopped and lungs

that begged me for air, a man,
late forties, grabbing my hand,
and looking into my eyes and
telling me to help him get more

air and I told him I couldn’t, but
I could try to get him anything
else and he said, yes, he wanted
clergy, the word he used—clergy—

this urgent way he said it, and so
I asked if we could bring in clergy
and the front desk worker who
seemed to know everything said,

yes, if a patient requests it, that
they were letting clergy in, but
only if a patient requests it, and
the patient did request it, and

the clergy came, a man who
was African, born and raised
in Nigeria, who insisted he did
not want a mask, but we told him

he had to, but he refused, so we
told him he couldn’t go in, so he
took the mask, put it on, we walked
him to the room and he immediately

took the mask off, and sat next to
the bed and asked if he could take
the patient’s hand and the patient
nodded yes, because he wasn’t

speaking anymore, how fast every-
thing changes, and the clergyman
asked if he could pray, and I stood
in the hall, the doorframe like

the scene from The Searchers,
so perfectly framed, and the patient
shook his head yes, and the clergy-
man started praying and his voice

was saying something about blood-
heat and something about not being
afraid and something about eagles’
wings, and the patient stared up

at the ceiling and I stared at them
both, and God stared at all three
of us, and this was in a room in
northern California, where the fires

were happening and, faint, through
the ceiling, we could hear the planes
that were carrying the flame retardant,
and a patient had opened a window

earlier for fresh air and the smell of
houses burning fell into the room
and a nurse closed the window not
quickly enough, and I walked down

the hall, with the clergyman’s voice
fading, and his voice sounded like
falling leaves in October back when
I was a boy and still believed in God.

Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2014 Michigan Notable Book, 2015 The Best Small Fictions, 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2019 Best of the Net finalist, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, and 2022 Pushcart Prize. Right now, Riekki’s listening to “Captain Jefferson” by James Newton Howard from the News of the World film score.