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D O R O T H Y B A R R E S I Pure Jesus, Early Morning Shift Every cancer brings a bowl to clean. Every operation has its mess. Then who can afford even one quick dream of the orderly on Psych who’s promised a beer with a blackout of kissing? The only white girl in Sterilization and Decontamination nods off to a freight of bedpans wheeled in, wheeled in. Another laundry bag stuffed with what’s catchable drops down the line. The women shake their heads. Facing off, they begin to sort clamps and knives as if not the giveaway tissue of the sick, but a family secret were flushed down the drain. And if summer doesn’t kill them— candyass college girls the agency keeps sending— if August doesn’t put them once and for all to its metal table, they’ll forget anger, forget pluck it out. The autoclaves whistle and sing to burn morning from its blood. Lunch is the only miracle. The 1980s ❚ 119 ...

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