The 2nd annual UBC Medicine Art As Adjuvant Writing Competition concluded this year with the reading of the winning pieces at the Coffee House on April 8.  Dr. Monica Kidd, a Calgary-based published author and doc, and Kristy Williams, UBC Med grad 2014 and co-founder of Arts As Adjuvant, took on the difficult task of selecting the winners from a pool of beautiful written pieces.  Prizes were possible due to the continuing support of the BC Medical Journal and funding from the UBC Med Wellness Initiative Network.  Arts in Medicine would like to recognize Pretty Verma for organizing such a wonderful contest. The grand prize of a gift card and publication in the BC Medical Journal is:

The Girl and the Snake

by Patricia Caddy

She tumbled and tumbled; down, down, down. There was a bang, and then nothing. Instantly, she slept. In and out, in and out. Her breath kept perfect, metered time. The grown-ups, having seen the fall, wailed as they scooped her up in arms. They ran the way that children run, not looking at the ground. At the hospital, her little veins were mined for clues and secrets. Wires watched her beating, lion heart. Computers looked inside her bones and there, there! They found her story. The girl was almost perfect, head to toe. The tumble, though, had shaken loose a snake of vein inside her head, behind her blue-green eyes. Her purple blood- made red with every gentle, numbered breath- was fast escaping, thanks to that shaken snake. It spilled into her bustling skull, chock-full of 2-year-old wonder, adventure, and wit. Her mother kissed her curls and made a sound, out in the hallway. The man in the mask cut her hair so short. Down we descended, not unlike she did, to a place where there had never been light. When we arrived we saw many colours. Violet and grey, scarlet and blue, creamy white and golden yellow. We let the colours wash away, and gasped at what was left behind. A jewel. The seat of her wild, joyous mind. Her brain, folded like coral. Immaculate. Gorgeous. We worked as fast as our hands could go, as carefully as anyone, ever, to keep what was perfect perfect. We put her back together as best we could, and after our job was done, we made armour out of the slack in our faces. We grew lumps in our throats stopping hot, fat tears. I asked the surgeon to please change his scrubs. Her mom made another sound, out of sight, in the hallway. We all crossed our fingers. Some crossed their toes. Our hearts thumped like rabbits inside of our chests and above everything else, we hoped. For the snake to sleep. For her eyes to open. For so much and so little, we hoped and we hoped. And all the while, the little girl laid there. Breathing in, and breathing out, and who knows for sure? Maybe dreaming.

The 2nd annual UBC Medicine Art As Adjuvant Writing Competition concluded this year with the reading of the winning pieces at the Coffee House on April 8.  Dr. Monica Kidd, a Calgary-based published author and doc, and Kristy Williams, UBC Med grad 2014 and co-founder of Arts As Adjuvant, took on the difficult task of selecting the winners from a pool of beautiful written pieces.  Prizes were possible due to the continuing support of the BC Medical Journal and funding from the UBC Med Wellness Initiative Network.  Arts in Medicine would like to recognize Pretty Verma for organizing such a wonderful contest. The following piece tied in third place:

Coda

by Janet Xu

The first time I listened to Gustav Holst’s Jupiter, I was with grandpa. Ever the music enthusiast, he took me to a concert for my 10th birthday. I sat there, a little lost and more than a little overwhelmed by how big the room felt and how sophisticated everyone seemed. Jupiter opened with a rapid arpeggio of strings heralding an exuberant brass melody, and together forming a crescendo of excitement. It unapologetically seized my attention andmy unease faded. I was enthralled. The dynamic shifts in themes, the transitions in melody from one instrument to another, and the juxtaposition of the majestic fanfare to a hymn-like tune left me scarcely a moment to exhale in between. I must have been enraptured, losing all sense of time; for when the ending came, it seemed too sudden and too soon. The reverberations of the final chord faded. In the ensuing moment of stunned silence, I digested that Jupiter has indeed ended. Then, the applause broke out. Coda, as my grandpa later taught me, brings a piece to an end. In Jupiter, it was the triumphant brass leading to a single resolute chord across all instruments. Ever since I can remember, grandpa looked old. Perhaps it comes naturally with being a grandparent. To the young me, he looked impossibly wrinkly and was a standard by which I defined old. Despite his appearance, he had boundless energy. He coaxed a skeptical me into sitting on a bike and lifting my feet off the ground as he held the handlebars. Under his encouragement, I cautiously pedaled forward as he held the seat. Unwittingly, I began to pedal down a gentle hill. Suddenly, I realized that “Erin! You’re riding! Keep going, you’re doing it!” That moment of disbelief and joy got the better of me and I landed in a heap. My knees stung but I hardly noticed. “Grandpa, did you see? I actually rode a bike!” I saw my grandpa running down the hill, waving “Yeah, you were great!” He picked me up and swung me through the air. “Should we try that again?” That time, I didn’t need any coaxing at all. Later, Grandpa took me on trips with his scooter. He showed me pictures of local birds and we raced to find them. We would stand there together, a slightly stooped man and a spindly girl two generations apart, with identical goofy smiles as we tried to chirp one of the jays into responding. In summers, Grandpa and I frequented the beach. We spent many an evening sitting in the sand, enjoying our ice cream cones and watching the rose-tinged sky. In my eyes, Grandpa was a larger-than- life hero who was always up for an adventure and had endless life stories. In late elementary, I moved to a different city with my parents, starting a new phase in life. Years passed and I grew, but Grandpa did not look any older. Whether it’s attributed to his already aged looks or his unrelenting youthful energy, I do not know. Sufficient to say in every reunion, I would picture him to look exactly as he did before we parted ways and he would always live up to my unsaid expectations. One year turned to two and soon the years blurred together. I grew independent and spent time with peers my age. After college, I moved to a city full of skyscrapers and smartly dressed people. Regular visits with Grandpa grew sparser as I dived into my own life and learned to explore without hand-holding. Grandpa continued to look spry, appearing at the major events in my life and celebrating with us in good vigor. He had developed some timeless quality in my eyes. It felt like he would be there forever; laughing, joking, and somehow always turning up at the right time. On a nondescript day, I received a call that Grandpa had a heart attack. I felt the floor drop from beneath my feet. How is it possible, my grandpa who has been that energetic constant in my life? I rushed to find him in a hospital bed. Suddenly, he had aged before my eyes. When did his skin take on that wan tone? He looked so small and frail among the sheets that I could not reconcile this present Grandpa with the one in my beloved memories. I felt my heart catch and pressure building behind my eyes. Grandpa continued to lay motionlessly amidst the tubes while a monitor recorded vitals in blinking numbers and lines. “Life support”, I was told, but the words could not penetrate my brain. Grandpa who was so full of I lost sense of time in that room where the sun does not seem to penetrate. The artificial lighting gave the machinery a cold garish affect. As Grandpa’s outlook grew dimmer, hushed discussions started in the corners until they permeated the room. We had to make a decision that no one should have to make. Then everything stopped. Grandpa was free of the tubes. My mind went to those years in a blur. When had I stopped looking for birds? When was the last time I had ice cream on a beach? Was I living my life like an express train focused on getting to a destination, but barely catching snippets of what went on around me? I wondered how many missed opportunities there were. I could have been there for Grandpa as he had been for me all those years. The suffocating pain and guilt were overwhelming. “Coda...” his voice whispered in my head. The finality was unmistakable, but there was no closure. In the moments of silence, I realized I could not catch up to reality so quickly. So many things unsaid and so many things I wanted to do together. It was as if there were supposed to be more movements to the suite. A void sits where my expectations were.

The 2nd annual UBC Medicine Art As Adjuvant Writing Competition concluded this year with the reading of the winning pieces at the Coffee House on April 8.  Dr. Monica Kidd, a Calgary-based published author and doc, and Kristy Williams, UBC Med grad 2014 and co-founder of Arts As Adjuvant, took on the difficult task of selecting the winners from a pool of beautiful written pieces.  Prizes were possible due to the continuing support of the BC Medical Journal and funding from the UBC Med Wellness Initiative Network.  Arts in Medicine would like to recognize Pretty Verma for organizing such a wonderful contest. The following piece tied in third place:

Soul

by Alexander Dodd

He seemed to find himself turning to words less those days.

I'm not sure why, but it's like his commitment was starting to fade.

His dedication to salvation, torn out like the first page of a thrift store novel.

I’m not sure it's ironic, but prose had always been what he’d turned to.

A stream of unconscious, enlightening him to what was really going on below;

what he was only sure existed because of his urge to clench a fist or that

depressed sigh that tried so hard to fly, but he choked at the base of his throat.

He wrote, not just to cope but to find the piece of him that was dying.

The piece of him that he used to cling to when the fear stole his breath,

squeezed his chest, and made him think that it just wasn't a test.

The piece of him that was so damn resilient.

The piece of him that picked him back up and said again.

The piece that was filled with so much compassion,

you'd think that love didn't know the word ration.

He turned to words because they were often a letter from his subconscious.

Often that smile from a stranger that made it impossible to blame... himself.

But those days his subconscious was loud like a full volume cracked record put

Looping the same pathological garbage until he didn't think that the happiness he

on to spin, skipping, and resetting.

clung to so tight,

was within.

He came from a science background, a culture of hardwired backbones, and

chemical feelings, a field that dealt with concepts organic, but what he found

when he wrote was that his prose was about life. He wasn’t religious but he

swore that there is one thing below that no matter how twisted you make it, it can

hold you whole. He talked about soul.

There was a time he thought he might not make it, yet alone thrive,

then a fellow poet YELLED

It reminds us our soul is alive.

“Never stop writing”

The 2nd annual UBC Medicine Art As Adjuvant Writing Competition concluded this year with the reading of the winning pieces at the Coffee House on April 8.  Dr. Monica Kidd, a Calgary-based published author and doc, and Kristy Williams, UBC Med grad 2014 and co-founder of Arts As Adjuvant, took on the difficult task of selecting the winners from a pool of beautiful written pieces.  Prizes were possible due to the continuing support of the BC Medical Journal and funding from the UBC Med Wellness Initiative Network.  Arts in Medicine would like to recognize Pretty Verma for organizing such a wonderful contest. The following piece was awarded the second prize:

Closure

by Ben Huang

Medical School is where i learned that The Key To Self-Care As A Professional Physician Is In Practicing The Art Of Self-Reflection. well i’m tired but i can’t sleep, tired of staring wide-eyed at a white box with black scribbles that just appear; thoughts all over the place. write it out they say, express it then send it away i see i’m free when i bleed i can just be but tonight i can’t write my eyes only see brokenness like the way i breaks up the smile in this simile all similarly simmering down to semantic symmetry all amounting to a mountain of imagery but in reality we reel in to find that we caught nothing. i find myself saying a whole lot of nothing. i should have said something. it feels like bluffing my way through a fluffed up, puffed up life but how can you heal someone when you are part of the disease she knew she must have known that deep down we are all children reaching up with dirty fingers trying to grasp the cookie jar we are all young blissful and blind to the curves ahead just along for the ride all we want is more ice cream and to not have to go home where Our Father is. her name was Suicide. actually, her name was j and she was lovely. there is a weighty silence depressing me, pressing keys into WordPress i can’t press my finger on it but i’m pretty sure something’s wrong pretty sure i feel a strong ulcer chewing on my stomach lining redefining the intertwining tastes of bitter and sweet into a mellow mash of melancholy. her name was j, warm scarves, flowers of France, the passion of Paris packed into a small frame a faint candlestick waxing, waning burning, dripping puddles pooling and cooling to create beautiful things. like her special ketchup tortellini. golden hair, gleaming eyes beaming smile, dreaming soul she had dreams; inescapable little things, part of the tapestry of life and the art of living, dreams; hopeful little things that stay with you and stoke the fire, dreams; givers of joy and markers of failure that begin when you sleep and stir your great awakening to the winding road of grinding effort and triumphant calls into the void she must have had dreams of greener pastures and softer meadows lightly shaded with even softer yellows, dreams; for glory, and flight fearless unto cloudless skies and starry night soaring, exploring storing memories in a mind as fragile as sandcastles under the sweet summer sun for it is the nature of man to imagine, to freely reach far beyond the stars. see, i see you in the CICU admitted for a broken heart a piece of art splattered and splayed across the surgeon’s table it seems she could have used some Aspirin aspiring to be desirable but too late, he prescribed the wrong treatment and i mistreated her. the mind is divine mystery our neurology, theology where all the gray and white matter i can’t figure me out i can’t release me out of this prison cell floating in mental cytoplasm with no localization signals to signal for local pain relief. i could use some Aspirin aspiring to be desirable but i prescribe the wrong treatment and i’ve retreated into numbness. n-u-m-b in a to-be-M-D i’d rather spell these letters than read their meaning on my degree i’d rather they stay enveloped in play-rhyme sealed behind me, ticking like that clock on the wall a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, I - don’t know how anymore. she must have had dreams; beautiful little things part of the tapestry of life but Suicide stains the softly sewn fabric, spilling over and staining the soul scarlet Suicide leaves behind a husband, a daughter, a son. and questions. questions cling to me the way her clothes would find her curves; invisible and haunting, ghosts remind me of the distance between hers and mine. the fingers of guilt choke out all expression from me i can’t put it into words; they stole them. i could have said something. she lingers in memories like a post-credit scene on replay but the film is set in stone and the ending has been spoiled. sometimes closure is unavailable, like the friend i seemed to be. i can’t shake this off the stains of scarlet on my sleeves i can’t take this off this over-worn coat of nostalgia and old dust. Medical School is where i learned that some lives just don’t end cleanly; they just