October 4, 2019 / 16:08 / Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, 665 Elm St / Roswell Hospital Fountain & Reflection Pool / Where is the pool at Bethesda, the flow from the Ganges, the Fount of Miriam? Will cancer see in us Gilgamesh or Utnapishtim; will God see in us Khezr, with his waters of immortality, or the companion he sought, who “impatiently prepares [himself] to die … as quick birds avoid a snare, to soar up in the free, untrammeled air?” 1
I sat beside the Roswell fountain and reflecting pool; I wondered if I could be healed: my mental health restored enough to finish medical school, to assuage suffering as a physician in Gilead, to one day sit beside this fountain and encourage another that “life is movement and we are healing and breaking and making and being made all of the time.” 2
1: The Conference of the Birds by Farid ud-din Attar, translated by Afham Darbandi and Dick Davis
2: It’s All Worth Living For by Levi The Poet
