Brenique Sheldon

When I was small,
I practiced playing nurse
on my father.

A plastic stethoscope,
a borrowed authority,
my ear pressed to the steady drum
of someone I believed was permanent.

He would close his eyes on purpose,
wait for me to panic,
then laugh

and I would bring him back.

Back then,
I thought returning was simple.

My uncle existed in a room
that never slept.

Dialysis breathed in cycles,
a tired orbit,
a machine teaching his blood
how to be clean again.

He spoke less each time I saw him.
Not because he had nothing to say,
but because words require a future tense.

He was on a list.

Which is another way of saying
he lived suspended
between two endings.

My father learned his body could betray him
by the time I was ten.

Crohn’s disease…
a quiet thief,
taking in pieces small enough
no one applauds their disappearance.

I began to understand then:
strength is not loud.
It is what remains
after certainty leaves.

At eighteen,
I left.

Uniform pressed into sharp lines,
name stitched over my chest
as if identity could be contained
by thread.

Distance makes loss theoretical
until it doesn’t.

My grandfather dissolved slowly.

Dementia turned his memories into constellations
visible,
but unreachable.

By 2018,
even the light had finished traveling.

There are absences
that do not announce themselves.

They accumulate.

Quiet as decay.

I never intended to step toward medicine.

It had already taken enough.

But purpose does not knock.
It appears.

A shadow day.
A dim room.

A man lying still
while something unseen moved through him,
mapping what could not be felt.

A kidney scan.

No alarms.
No urgency.

Only waiting.
Only the soft rotation of the camera,
faithful as gravity.

I watched the screen
as his body translated itself
into light.

Faint at first.

Then undeniable.

And something in my chest
something I had carried without language
shifted

Not grief.

Not closure.

Something else.

Like recognizing a voice
you haven’t heard in years
coming from a room
you don’t remember entering.

The machine continued its orbit.

Unconcerned with past or future.
Only presence.
Only truth.

And for a moment,

I understood

some things do not leave.

They change form.

Bio

Brenique N. Sheldon was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. She is a military veteran and a nuclear medicine student pursuing a career as a medical dosimetrist. In Half-Life, she reflects on personal encounters with illness and loss, exploring the quiet endurance of those who face vulnerability. The poem is a meditation on presence, care, and the unseen persistence of life. This is an invitation for all health care professionals to remember the humanity, connection, and purpose that guide their work. In the stillness of presence, what lingers long after the moment has passed?

Lakyn Webb 

He rode the city bus to the VA, always early, always dressed like dignity was a duty 

shirt crisp, shoes shined to a mirror’s edge, as if he owed the world a polished version of himself. 

He was ninety-something, still sharp-eyed, still carrying a posture etched by battles he would never describe. 

He had been a prisoner of war, but he never said where, or when, or how long. The details were locked behind a stare that could end a question mid-air. 

But he told me once about the Congo how he was lost for two months, fevered and disoriented, 

carried back to life by a forest community who shared their water, their shelter, their mercy. 

He survived continents, conflicts, viruses, and the slow erosion of outliving everyone he cared for. 

But he didn’t think his life mattered. 

When the psychiatrist asked if he wished he were dead, he didn’t break eye contact. “I’m ninety-three,” he said. “What exactly am I staying for?” 

Then he looked at me, long and discerning, and something inside him softened. 

“You understand empathy,” he said once. “That’s why I like you.” He didn’t explain. He didn’t need to. 

To the hurried staff moving too fast to see him, he’d mutter under his breath, half armor, half warning: “If you’re looking for sympathy, check the dictionary.” 

Humor as shield. Loneliness disguised as wit. He carried his pain quietly the way some men carry medals kept close, rarely shown, never mentioned. 

After he died, the confusion grew. No obituary, no next of kin, no clean narrative to explain who he had been. 

So I held a small gathering at his apartment complex. And people arrived neighbors from twenty years, the bus driver who knew his stop, the mail carrier who saved his letters, the woman downstairs he once helped through chemo. 

Each person came with a different story, a different version of him, a fragment of a life he never fully revealed. 

We pieced him together like stained glass, each shard bright, incomplete, and unexpectedly holy. 

He thought his life was pointless. But mine bent around his. And so did theirs. And theirs. And theirs. 

I carry him with me, into every room, every shift, every moment someone needs to be seen before they can be saved. 

He believed he didn’t matter. But he did. And we will not forget him. 

Bio 

Lakyn Webb is an emergency room nurse at the VA, a PhD student in the UAMS College of Nursing, and a Disaster Health Services and Communications volunteer with the American Red Cross. She also serves on the UAMS College of Nursing Board and is the Director of Research for the UAMS 12th Street Health and Wellness Center. Her work reflects a strong commitment to nursing leadership, service, and community health. 

Taylor Appleton 

When I was a child, I found a hurt animal, 

and I ran in the light of the sun. 

And was amazed at the smallest of rays that reflected in its eyes as I nurtured it, 

And tried to make it whole 

One day I realized, you could stare into the light until it began to hurt 

And all your shadows would fall behind you. 

There was a time when I could not look at pain without feeling it. 

Yet now I cannot afford to; I am blinded 

I see you but not your suffering anymore 

I treat with minimal care, though it feels here nor there 

And though I am blinded, on my breaks, I go outside and continue to stare at the sun 

They say experience is relative, philosophically, yet 

A child, full of hope, is staring at the same sun alongside me 

So I tear my eyes away, look down, and say 

If only you could be my partner again. 

Bio 

Tayler is a first year medical student and hoping to go into pediatric neurology. She is the author of one novel and has always had an intense passion for combining medicine with the arts.