The Hummingbird by Stephen P. Kiernan Page A

Worried about a bad grade on your job evaluation?”
    “I hate to see a person suffer, especially when it is preventable.”
    A shudder passed through his whole frame, his jaw rattling. “Blast you.”
    “I am not the disease,” I told him.
    “Nor are you the cure.”
    “Why won’t you let me help you?”
    The Professor sniffed. “I have my reasons.”
    “You think this is stoicism but actually it is pride.”
    His eyes flashed. “You dare to lecture me about stoicism? Have you ever read the Stoics?”
    “I don’t even know who they are.”
    He threw his hands up, as if to say how could anyone converse with such a know-nothing.
    “Forgive me then, Professor Reed.” I stood and gathered my things. “I will go look up who the Stoics were. But I have no interest in standing by while you refuse to use your own powers of reason.”
    I suppose I knew just where to dig at him. I had just reached the door when he called out.
    “Wait.”
    “Yes, Professor?”
    He wrestled with himself, trying not to shiver. It lasted a few seconds, then his body was shaking again. “What did you call it? Preemptive?”
    “Analgesia. Yes, sir.”
    He thrust his jaw forward as if he was furious with me. “This once.”
    I gave him a smaller dose than Cheryl had, in a time-release formulary so it would not knock him out. Then I sat in his kitchen and wrote a pain management plan for Melissa and whoever followed. By the time I left, the Professor was watching the BBC world report. All was calm.
    “Have a good night,” I called from the doorway.
    He pointed a remote at me. “Don’t you gloat.”
    ONE CHALLENGE HOSPICE WORKERS FACE is that our jobs are so intense, returning to the normal world can cause emotional whiplash. When you spend the day facing death, ordinary life can seem petty. Often, people who can’t find a reliable re-entry routine just burn out.
    I was lucky with Michael, and I remember the day I realized it. My patient at the time was a legitimately tough guy, Cleon, the longtime bus driver and all around strong-arm of a halfway house for troubled boys. A tall, dignified man, he had the nastiest case of Crohn’s disease I’d ever seen: mouth sores, skin pustules, plus the usual digestive misery. Cleon quit his Marlboros when the illness put him to bed, but he still had a masterpiece hack of a cough. He was strong though, like a bulldozer, and so committed to his quiet wife and to helping those misdirected boys, he would not die.
    Every day was worse, weight loss and complications, but Cleon refused to let go. I helped with symptoms the best I could, but there was little mercy for him, and the hours stretched long. The man was suffering.
    One evening I stopped in the supermarket on the way home, and found myself waiting at the dairy case while a woman was choosing which eggs to buy. For some reason the shelves were not as full as usual. She opened carton after carton, finding a broken egg in each one. I stood there, not saying a thing, while the woman tried one after another.
    “Can you believe it?” she said to me finally, holding the latest carton open so I could see that one egg was cracked. Her mouth was pursed as if she were preparing to spit. “Some idiot must have dropped the whole pallet of them. These people have the gall to charge two dollars and twenty-nine cents, but they don’t have one decent dozen. This is a disgrace.”
    I turned and left the store at once. That’s how badly I wanted to slap her.
    The people in traffic had a similar effect, their hurry the utmost in triviality. I wanted to shout at them, “I have spent all day with a man who is suffering like a gladiator fighting lions, and you want to cut me off so you can sit at that red light one car sooner?”
    When I reached home, I went in the back door. I leaned against the kitchen wall with my eyes closed. Michael came into the room. I opened my eyes and saw that he had halted in the middle of the kitchen. He was looking me over, and for