The White Coat

For those with chronic illness impelled to attend 
a place of healing and comfort hospitals resemble 
institutions of religious faith where parishioners 
gather seeking direction and assurance from a higher 
order whose earthly representative is regarded 
as an emissary from god. No less is the medical 
practitioner considered a demi-god healing the ill 
thrusting the spectre of the Grim Reaper away from
contention. And so doctors have become priests 
of health, a position to which they accustom themselves 
in entitlements of venerated power over death
taking their very special place in public trust. Until
nature presumed to retrieve for herself the overlooked 
reality as arbiter of existence creator of all that is 
in whom alone divine authority rests, thrusting the 
world of man into a mad dilemma of its own 
devising where divine intermediaries, of faith and 
medicine find themselves helpless and what's more 
become themselves vulnerable targets reducing their
status to mere expendable human beings. There the 
story does not end for delving deep into their psyches 
and professions, suppressing fear and their own 
humanity they rise to the occasion embracing their 
colleagues while struggling desperately  to own 
the reputation they burnished to rescue humanity.