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death

Jamie’s Hair

His hair declared him his own bohemian, a middle-class free spirit
with a mortgage to pay down, a racing bike, a subscription to Netflix,
and a frau as deceptively frail as Hans Memling’s palest Madonna.

Dead Enough?: The Paradox of Brain Death

 am a transplant and cancer surgeon and in my office, stashed among folders containing notes and old operative reports from my residency, two fellowships, and practice, is a 9 × 12 manila envelope that bulges with small white stickers. Each sticker bears the name and age of one of the 150 brain-dead patients whose organs I have procured.

 

The Sound A Body Makes

Only three days later I realized the chalk outline was gone, faded, no doubt, in the rains that flushed the gutters clean, & now a steady line of haze as the sun walks its beat. There were photographers, yes, a few nights back: flashbulbs burp [...]

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