I was held inside for four days before they let me go out. MB took me for my first walk. "So this," I thought, "is what it's like to be a dog." In that moment, I loved MB as much as I'd ever loved anyone.

The night was clear and still and bitter cold. I had forgotten what it was like to breathe fresh air. My ears and nose stung but I hated to go back inside.

Healing takes time. I was at the worst of a drug reaction late on a Friday afternoon. I had toxic levels of one medication in my bloodsteam, and I was having an allergic reaction to two others. Nobody knew quite what to do with me. Marie took an ancient chinese coin she had and put it in the palm of my hand. As she wrapped my fingers around it, she said "Hold on to that. That's for survival." I held onto it for days. Sometimes even now, I keep it in my pocket. I'm surviving.

I read Tarot. At one point Marie suggested that I write about the cards that most interested me at that time. These are the poems that came out of that challenge.

Susan was my anchor through some of the horrible visions and nightmares. She was very businesslike and comforting in her insistence that reality was better than what I was seeing.

She said to me: "Plateauing can be progress- if you let it."

The hand of the nurse
small and strong
pulls up the sheets
to put sorrows down
for the night.
That hand pushes back the hair
smoothes the forehead
and she steps back
into the darkness, smiling.
She knows that seeds
that have fallen into these furrows
will bear fruit.

22 april 1995

This one is all full of arcane symbolism. OK, I give up. Tell me. Coach didn't miss any of it.

I call her Coach (a foreign sounding name to her) because that's what she was to me. Over and over again she would cram the helmet back on my head, kick me in the butt and tell me to get back in the game.