Kati is an amazing woman. Twenty years ago she was in the Peace Corps, traveling all over Africa making friends and teaching kids.
Surprise Story

author of literary fiction with a southern drawl
Kati is an amazing woman. Twenty years ago she was in the Peace Corps, traveling all over Africa making friends and teaching kids.
I'm meeting with a doctor to schedule my hysterectomy. I'm nervous, but okay. The doctor is very kind and patient and I'm grateful. All of a sudden she looks up from the computer and asks, "Do you work for cardiology?"
So I was sitting in the ER last night beside a homeless man who had been bitten in the face by a spider. I was sick as a dog with a kidney infection. We got to be good friends after four or five hours.
She had to decide right then what she was taking and what she was leaving. All her memories out there in the yard.
She was a tiny thing with bright hazel eyes the color of a lion's, and a mane of sunbleached dreadlocks. Not a drop of makeup on her tanned skin, but she seemed to glow.
He was stressed because of some new things going on that I wasn't aware of. For some reason I told him about Curly having seizures. I have no idea why that popped up but, it did.
When I was little, I had an imaginary friend, his name was Uncle Wilkensack. Actually, I had twenty one imaginary friends because Uncle Wilkensack had a wife, they had seventeen kids and they had two pet alligators. I can still remember the first time I met them. I was sick with a high fever, lying [...]
Something else happened while I was there that I’ll be forever grateful for. My seventh grade science teacher, Nita Heilman, reached out to me on FaceBook and asked if I’d like to volunteer at St. Bethlehem at Room in the Inn. I jumped at the chance.
How many times have you seen a teenage kid with tattoos and black circles under their eyes and jump to the conclusion that they are little trouble makers in the making?
This is another memory from my time in pediatric cardiology, and another favorite. You never know who is going to stand up when you go to the waiting room and call a patient’s name. In pediatrics, it’s not only the patient you get to meet, but also their families. This time, when I called the [...]