Sarah Cross
– On being a High-Risk Obstetrician Post-Dobbs
Biology transcends geography. The same
ailments ail us from Alaska to Alabama.
I call my friend and colleague in Tennessee.
I am moving from Minnesota to Connecticut,
from lakes to ocean and all the bluest blue.
Her patients get sick the same as mine.
Everything can seem alright and then blood
comes. Water breaks too soon.
The ultrasound is not as expected.
Pregnancy is humanity’s most imperative work,
and is mortally dangerous.
She knows the same medicine as me.
The same treatments that save my patients
can save hers. The care that makes me a physician
now makes her a criminal.
She stands at the bedside at night, holding
a hand growing cold. Her hands, tied,
but otherwise capable of prevention.
—
Sarah Cross is a poet, physician, and mother to three young children. Originally from Brooklyn, NY, she now lives on the shoreline of Connecticut. She believes there is a powerful and important role for the arts in the process of healing. Her poems grapple with mortality, death, love, and uncertainty. She has won several awards for her poetry including the Annual William Carlos Williams Poetry Competition, the Legible Script Creative Arts Contest, and honorable mention in the New Physician’s Creative Arts Contest. Her poems have appeared in multiple journals and anthologies. As a member of The Journal of Medical Humanities editorial board, she edits themed poetry collections. She is a maternal-fetal medicine specialist and teaches an elective on poetry in medicine to health-professional students.