This poem is part of the Poems for doctors project. You can find out more about the project here.

Season 2 : poem 6

Medical lecturer Gillian Strugnell reads Recovery Room by Patricia Beer

Recovery Room

Patricia Beer

The noise in the recovery room
Was half footfall and half hum

Like a well-mannered gallery
Of pictures that I could not see.

And then a name disrupted it:
The hated name of childhood: Pat,

A name I had not answered to
For fifty years and would not now.

Another voice began to talk:
Pat. And still I did not speak.

My husband waited in my room
And in the end they sent for him,

After an hour or two of this.
I heard Patricia. And said ‘Yes?’

Rights: by permission of Carcanet Press

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