TEARS.

April 24, 2007

I wrote Tears after one of the quietest, most emotionally jarring calls I’d run in months. It wasn’t trauma in the traditional sense—no gore, no chaos—but there was something haunting about that woman lying on her back, one side of her body betraying her while the other cried in silence. The rain, the blinking lights, the awkward small talk between procedures—all of it blurred into this visceral ache. What struck me wasn’t her condition. It was her dignity. Tucked shirt. Comb-set hair. And in the end, the only way she could communicate was through tears. I never forgot that.