Healthcare for a Thousand, Please

“I’m here, Alex. I’m doing. I don’t do, but I’m doing.”
—Dec. 2017 challenger in response to Mr. Trebek’s mid-game interview

“I’m surprised you remember me,” my wife
tells the nurse and, “Thank you,” and, “Thank you,”

again, as she’s escorted to the back office. Muted
Final Jeopardy above the counter

close-captions my unrest, and the contestant in me
buries my horror in the form of easy questions:

How long should we expect? What happens if
she doesn’t want the extra saline flush? Can I

turn the volume up? It helps if I can follow
that final music, pretend I can make a difference

if I squeeze the button faster than the patients
who got here first. This time

I’m asked to stay outside. It’s not the waiting
room that bothers me. It’s the waiting.

Returning champ and challenger, the clue when we return.
When I see the nurse, I’m begging her

to demonstrate the metronome’s anxiety. To show me
how a pause can answer what hurts the most to ask.

AT Hincapie was awarded the Margaret Reid Prize for Formal Verse with Winning Writers and was a finalist for the Knightville Poetry Prize with New Guard Review. His writing has also been featured with The Coalition of Texans with Disabilities, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, and Yes Yes Books’ Vinyl Poetry. He is an editor with Palette Poetry and teaches in Colorado, where he lives with his wife and their registered service pit bull.