You Know Who I feel Bad For?

The doctors of all those medical miracles you hear about. The opera singer born with half a tongue who seems to slip into every conversation, "The doctors said I'd never speak like a normal child." Or the tap dancer who lost all his toes in a childhood tractor accident and constantly reminds you that the doctors said he'd never walk again.

The doctors.

I picture them hunched over cold coffee and Chinese food in some disheveled hospital lounge. Their pissed. I feel the need to give them a voice. So here goes:

"What were we supposed to say?" one of them says rising to his feet and tossing away a half-smoked cigarette. "We're talking about a little girl with half a tongue. I mean, I guess everything's a judgment call, but how did I become the bad guy here? Oh, sure, I guess I should be more open-minded. OK fine. The next time I get some old codger in here with a tumor the size of Texas on his lymphnode, I won't tell his family he's got two weeks to live. I'll tell them the human body is a miraculously complex instrument that we have only begun to understand. I'll tell them to go home, pray, pile some crystals on his bed, meditate, consult an authentic Native American Shaman, an acupuncturist, and the healing power of hugs. And I'll tell them if you try all that and after two weeks the codger still bites it, then I guess you just didn't try hard enough.

"And when the next half-tongued bitch I treat can't even pronounce her name after ten years of speech therapy, or the next toeless S.O.B who stumbles through my aggressive balance exercises still can't dance like the medical miracle I keep telling him about, well I'll just tell them it's their fault."