Luanne Castle: Another Week of Grand Rounds With Dr. Webber

Luanne Castle
ANOTHER WEEK LEFT OF GRAND ROUNDS WITH DR. WEBBER

My eyes lock onto Dr. Webber’s seed pearl spectacle cord as she launches clinical phrases from the patient report. After our first day trailing her, I bought a similar cord, with pink crystals, bobbed my hair her length. Now I reach for my phantom locks, and my hand grasps only air. The others gaze at her with big dog eyes, ready for the treat-drop of each sentence from the doctor. I shift from foot to foot. Crossing my arms, I rub them for warmth, still smarting about the doctor’s provider-patient etiquette in the last room. Still irritated with myself. Dr. Webber’s short nod directs our attention to the bed.

The patient lies face down, her wrists banded to the bed frame. She moans. “I feel them crawling.” A tiny sob catches in her throat. We all draw near and peer down at her. She’s twenty-one and her bare back is slender and tanned, but speckled with lesions—some bloody, others scabbed, a few scarred. I want to cover her, create a shield against cold analysis. With her closed pen, Dr. Webber traces a chilling design as if a blue thread unfolds under the epidermis. Using a tweezer from the bedside tray, she pulls a tiny red filament out of the woman’s skin, holding it aloft while the other students look closely and murmur. “Although some maintain that this manifestation is a reaction to spirochetal infection, it’s more likely that the patient suffers from delusional parasitosis.” As she explains a new theory that Morgellons is contagious, I grab the bed’s footboard.

Dr. Webber drops the thread into the trash and rips off her gloves, tossing them aside. She turns to leave abruptly, no word to the patient, leading us toward her office for an oral quiz. I lag behind, attempt a smile at the patient before I trudge out of the room. The group is down the hall, but Dr. Webber halts and stares back. A loud voice surprises me before I realize it’s mine. “Is it textile or tissue? How do we know if it doesn’t go to the lab?” Dr. Webber’s face hardens into an ice shield, and my guilty throat is suddenly parched. Something flutters under my skin.

Luanne Castle’s Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net-nominated poetry and prose have appeared in Your Impossible Voice, Copper Nickel, Verse Daily, Saranac Review, Bending Genres, The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Disappointed Housewife, South 85, Roi Fainéant, River Teeth, The Dribble Drabble Review, Flash Boulevard, and many other journals and anthologies. She has published four award-winning poetry collections. Her hybrid memoir-in-flash will be published by ELJ Editions in 2026. Luanne lives with five cats in Arizona along a wash that wildlife use as a thoroughfare.