“That which does not kill him,” Poem, Marcia Eppich-Harris.
That which does not kill him
A school shooting in Georgia today.
I sit on a phone call trying to fix hospital bills
for my 18-year-old son
who escaped the K-12 system without being shot
or killed.
70 miles west of me,
he sits in a college classroom,
statistically safer than he has been
for the last twelve years of his life,
living in the jungle of the United States
K-12 school system.
“He’s an adult now,”
the hospital billing manager tells me.
“He’s 18 and legally in charge of his finances.”
So now it’s not the school shooter
but the healthcare bills that are coming for him.
Two months behind on the bill
because the computer system won’t let me pay it
“Because he’s an adult,”
they keep saying.
But he’s in good standing
because I am a goddamn adult
and I persist and insist
that my kid’s credit not be
ruined by healthcare in America
since paying for college will likely
do that well enough on its own.
On hold with the billing department,
I read the New York Times’ Breaking News Alert –
4 dead, 9 wounded (at least) –
I send a silent prayer out of habit
to a god I no longer believe in:
“Thanks for letting my kid survive to the ripe age of 18
and go to college where
there are statistically fewer school shootings”
(but not zero).
He’s an adult,
and the healthcare bills are coming.
So we’ll pay on,
dollars against the current,
borne back ceaselessly against
diabetes, knee replacements, mental health, physical therapy,
because we live in America,
where staring at a screen is the only way to live.
Fatter, unhealthier,
replacing stiffened joints we never use,
sitting in a chair.
We’ll see a doctor about it,
accumulating bills upon bills for the ailment of
working in this economy.
But at least we didn’t get shot in school today.
God knows what that would have cost.
Marcia Eppich-Harris is the artistic director and founder of Southbank Theatre Company in Indianapolis. She holds a PhD in Shakespeare and Dramatic Literature and taught at the college level for over fifteen years. Her writing includes plays, musicals (composer/lyricist), fiction, poetry, scholarship, and reviews. Her creative writing is influenced by the literature and history of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the British Medieval and Renaissance periods, as well as current events. She focuses thematically on politics, philosophy, the arts, gender, family, and culture. Her plays “The Profession” and “Seneca and the Soul of Nero” were published by Next Stage Press, and her fiction and poetry have appeared in several journals and magazines.