When I was nine, babysitter Elsie
flipped on Medic right before bedtime,
excited to have someone watch it with her,
snack on homemade cookies and milk.
The show features a nine-year-old boy,
whisked in from an ambulance,
pale, even on black and white TV,
afflicted by a weird disease
that sounds like a pagan God
from Sunday School.
He dies on this program,
his mother sobs at the end.
Sit stiff as a gurney,
don’t eat Elsie’s cookies.
Ask what killed that boy.
"Oh, leukemia. No cure.
Not many get it,
but don’t worry, most don’t.
But ya never know.
Daily created good deeds
so I could fall asleep after I prayed:
“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
if I should die of leukemia
before I wake, I pray the Lord
my soul to take, ” until I got old enough,
realized it was just a TV show.
Relaxed until cousin Jane died from the disease.
I never let my young children
watch medical shows
until they were old enough
to switch the channel themselves.
Originally published in Terror House Magazine