EXPLORING THE BOUNDARIES

Yellow

You pour the glass of white wine, your second, at ten in the morning, and wonder why it is called white when it is yellow. Even the grapes aren’t white; they are a pastel green with an even paler yellow flesh, or even red, purple, or sometimes black. An obvious deceit. You wonder about that as you swirl the liquid and watch it catch the light.

You began drinking in the morning after irregular night shifts in the Emergency Department, required from the beginning of a career in emergency medicine and misery for all but the dedicated night owl.

Coming home from the hospital, exhausted, knowing you had only eight hours to sleep before your next shift, you would have a glass or two of wine to help you forget. Sometimes more, like the morning after you were assaulted by a grieving woman who had just lost her sister and three nieces and nephews in a drug-related house fire. That morning required most of the bottle. Your boss called four hours into your sleep to make certain you weren’t too upset to come to work that