White coat

Cold hands

You skim the chart

You watch the clock

Say I’m “fine for my age”

Print the script

You beat the flock

I’m begging

“Something’s wrong”

You’re nodding like a metronome

You shake my pulse like it’s a joke

Then send my questions home

This is the shame of general practitioners

Looking through people like panes of glass

You got a waiting room full of stories

But you rush them past

You rush them past

This is the shame of general practitioners

Playing roulette with a stethoscope

We came here holding out our bodies

You sent us out holding broken hope

Fluorescent glare

Thin gown

You tap the keys

You dodge my eyes

Call it “stress

Dehydration”

Slap a label on my life

You miss the bruise beneath the bruise

You miss the tremor in my breath

You talk in tidy bullet points

While I sit inches from my death

[low vocal register] How many signs on the same old skin

Have to scream before you hear them?

How many nights do we lie awake

Paying the price for your career

Then? [crescendo]

Piano pounding like a racing heart

Guitar crying for the ones you lost

[processed female vocals] “Do no harm” in a haunted echo

While the saxophone counts the cost [sax solo]