"Flocked Keepers" by Elle Newcome, MD

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An ex told me she was having suicidal thoughts. In scrubs in the emergency department, I know how to handle this. Over FaceTime in pajamas, I do not.

My training as a medical student prepared me to ask calmly about ideation, intent, plan, and history. My experience as a human left me crying that night, tucked in a ball. The scales of my back curved and interlocked, armored, like an armored armadillo or potato bug. I heaved breaths like a pug walking, trying to catch my thoughts, led on a leash by the unknown owner of day. Perhaps it is the postman. I do not let anyone touch my soft belly.

Together, we handled it well: she called emergency services. I picked up too many snacks -- a KIND bar, peach rings, Pepsi -- not sure if we’d be sitting in the emergency room for hours on end, a reflection of our fractured mental health infrastructure.

I wished I could pour that fizzling soda over the entire situation, letting the bubbled caffeination seep into her sadness and rejuvenate it with a lighthearted jolt. Instead, the deflated carbonation rolled off her oiled back like a duck, glistening. Her forest green sheened feathers are calm, unruffled, as her bright orange webbed feet of thought paddle frantically under the surface. I am an eel: charged, calm, and rolling with the waves that rock me, rippling in tandem down the parallel sides of my smooth body.

I left my video off through online lecture that week. In muted static, I echolocated my way through the course. Stalactites dripped in darkness around me. The cave felt cool, damp, reassuring. It held the stories of those who had navigated this situation before me, before her. I flap my delicate, gothic wings. They are so thin you see the blood vessels that course through them, steeling me with an eerie steadiness. I have been gripping upside down from my toes ever since. There is protocol for this, I tell myself. There is precedent.

I respect her autonomy: cages are not meant to protect humans. We reached out to a network, our crew flocked together, geese headed north. Relinquishing my position as tip of the “V” felt simultaneously heavenly and purposeless. I live in suspended bliss between relief and the faltering that accompanies a change in vocation.

Honking, they flew on, and I settled into a new stillness, nestling near blanched weeds at the lagged edge of a quiet pond. I pull myself a bath that night and light a candle that smells like my childhood -- Smucker’s chapstick and pink berries. The tears do not come until later. When they do, I release their saltiness into the warm water, sending freshwater minnows to sea. I hope they do ok, I pray. I hope she does ok. In the bath, my body glows with warmth, an orb of an angler fish dancing safely in front of its jagged jaws. Safe, but tethered. Tethered to its jagged jaws by a filament of connectedness.

It will be a long time before I roll over and expose my soft pug belly. The postman is here and my guard is up. I protect those around me fiercely, myself included. I bark at speculators, I bark at spectators, I bark at my shadow, I bark at the wind. I tell myself I am safe, and I do not yet fully believe it. I go to counseling. This week is not about me. This story is not my story. This depression is not my depression. Yet we are interlinked, a network of beings whose journey implicitly impacts another.

My favorite legend about stars is that a Being throws a blanket over the earth, tucking in its winged, webbed, and wild inhabitants. To permeate the darkness, a hummingbird flies up to the blanket, poking holes for the light to shine through. I want to be that hummingbird for her, devotedly spiking pinpricks of light through the uncomforting, dark comforter. I have hummingbirds that flit me through this week, plethoric wings palpitating like a single beating heart. I wonder if the “V” of geese would make the same delicate holes. Perhaps that is why Jupiter and Saturn overlapped this month: big goose holes in the sky.

To say this week was a zoo is an understatement. It was an exercise of triage, boundaries, and the calling all of keepers. It is a legend that is not about me. It is a legend that will repeat over and over and over again, as we are human and depression is universal. We are keepers of one another, and with this knowledge, we walk together through the hummingbird-dappled, goose-spackled night toward dawn.

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Elle Maureen Newcome is a former active travel leader and current internal medicine intern, who enjoys creating as a way to unwind. She is passionate about addressing health disparities through medicine. In her free time, you can find Elle nordic skiing through her new neighborhood on rollerskis, spending time with friends and family, and of course, writing.