Coffee.

Black. Coffee.

 

Innocent, brown powder, cradled in the white plastic teaspoon that I suspend over my cup.

 

One. Two. Three. The powder poofed into the depths, a faint brown explosion of fumes into the air.

 

Hot water. Boiling hot water. Trickled into the cup, blending the powders, brewing, foaming, like a madman's chemical concoction. I get a slight whiff of caffeine and I'm sniffing it like a drug addict.

 

Mmm. Coffee.

 

I take a sip of the rich, black liquid. It lingers on my tongue, bitter as hell but I learn to savour it. To appreciate the bitterness. As a chinese saying once mentioned that you taste the sweetness in the bitterness. The beauty in the suffering.

 

I wake up, slowly, luxuriously, like a tiger waking from a nap, stretching gloriously in the evening sun before hunting for its meal.

 

I wonder how I can do without this miracle drink.

 

Long hailed as the one thing that keeps the great US of A going on a day-to-day basis and long contested and debated in health journals and all manner of media to be able to prevent diabetes to causing strokes and heart attacks, I usually drink this only when I need to. But oh, how I need it now.

 

I need it when I'm bent double over my notes, nodding off to sleep and I desperately need to be alert enough to scribble a few more words. I need it when I'm trying to think of what to do next, who to treat next, who's life I will make a difference in. Bleh.

 

It's a Friday and a nurse told me this morning, "Its POETS day."

 

What? POETS day?

 

"Yeah. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow's Saturday."

 

Ah. We both grin. How are you, Blondie?

 

"Oh well. I'm just a box of fluffy ducks. And I'm still here. Any day above ground is a good day, I guess." And she heads off to get a few more medications charted for a patient.

 

***

Things are happening so quickly as of late.

 

And so many exciting things too. I wonder if I'll get lost in the blur of it all.

 

I'm tired but I've got much to do.

 

Let's keep going. I only have two more hours of this #$%* left.