They’d played “punchies” that day to see who’d flinch first.
Transported middle of the night from The Tombs to Bellevue,
abdomen rigid, in pain, sign of a ruptured spleen,
we rushed toward the OR elevator, a rookie cop running beside.

Cage-like, the elevator waited, accordion door open,
cigarette butts on the floor, operator’s stool empty.

“Hello!” I cried down the empty hall.
”We need a ride!” Had he gone to sleep?

We pushed the gurney in, slammed the door shut.
No floor buttons to push, but a handled control wheel!
Tentatively, I turned it forward. With a shudder
we ascended, floors rushing by.

Richard Bronson is on the Faculty of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care & Bioethics of the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. He is a member of the Boards of the Walt Whitman Birthplace and the Long Island Poetry Collective, is the recipient of the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award of the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, and served as Poet Laureate of Suffolk County 2021 – 2023.