He was right about Oliver. He was starting to settle, and his cries were infrequent now. I stepped forward cautiously on my tiger path. “What’s your name? Where did you come from?” “Ahh so sorry, I almost forgot my introduction. This may help.” He pointed to a silver name plate on his chest labeled with gold letters, “Ole Lukøje.” “Ole…what is that, Swedish?” “Danish. But let’s see here…” He produced a white handkerchief from his pocket and rubbed it for a few seconds. After his polishing, I saw the letters had changed to English. “The Sandman!? As in the guy from the fairy tales that makes kids go to sleep? No way…that’s not real!”
Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction
The Tiger, the Witching Hour and the Sandman
Sound waves resonated through my skull from my temples to the roots of my teeth. I hunched my head forward, trying to concentrate on my computer screen. In the background, my toddler son Samuel was rolling his monster trucks across the kitchen floor. His younger brother Oliver, just an infant, was screaming at his mother for attempting to feed him. His cries filled the house, pausing only to refill his angry bellows. Footsteps approached and the crying grew louder.
“I can’t do this right now! He’s just screaming. He’s not nursing! I need a break,” said my wife Lara, holding our young fortissimo.
“Okay, just a second, let me finish looking over this patient,” I said.
“You said you’d be done thirty minutes ago!” she said, bouncing Oliver on her hip.
“I know, I’m sorry. I’ve only got a couple charts left for tomorrow.”
“Can’t you just look over those in the morning, I really need some help here.”
I pressed my forehead into my palm. “Gaawhh…yeah, that should be fine. Sorry, I was trying to figure out some potential discharge plans and got behind.” I stood up and stretched my back, unfolding my poor posture.
“I know you’re nervous about going back tomorrow, but I’m sure you’re gonna be fine honey,” said Lara, handing me our wailing son.
“Maybe if we actually sleep tonight! Tomorrow’s gonna be rough.”
“Trust me, being here all day with both of them won’t be easy. Especially since Oliver wants held constantly.”
“I’m not saying it will be, but work isn’t exactly a cakewalk either,” my tone was more biting than I intended. It didn’t help that we had to shout over the crying baby.
“I know, I’m sorry. It’s going to be hard for both of us…and it’s not a competition,” said Lara, easing the tension.
“You’re right honey, I’m sorry too. It’s just so frustrating. He never seems happy.”
“It’s like he’s overtired the moment he wakes up.”
“I know! It’s exhausting.”
“I hope he grows out of this.”
“He will. It’d just be nice if it was soon.”
“Are you okay if I do bedtime with Sam?”
“Sure, I’ll give him a goodnight kiss now and then take Oliver and walk some laps with the carrier.”
* * * * *
It had become a ritual, night after night, to walk laps in the backyard with Oliver Robert Morey strapped to my chest. He was then six weeks old and had experienced an aggressive shift in temperament. Previously, I had affectionately called him O’Bob most of the time, but had begun referring to him as Howler Monkey, Screech Owl, or the Backyard Banshee. Oliver was a cute little baby, in my biased paternal opinion, but such doting thoughts were far from my mind. Thinking in general was limited, as I tried in vain to calm his huddled mass on our mind-numbing march. He was squirming, shrieking, and piercing my ear drums with impossible stamina. Neither mama’s breast nor the bottle struck his fickle fancy tonight, so the carrier was our last remaining hope to soothe him. (If this didn’t work, I’d be sending a hologram to Obi Wan Kenobi.)
We were in the middle of another “witching hour.” Although, for the past couple weeks, this had been the norm for most of the day. His periods of happiness were fleeting. He was perpetually fussy while awake, yet refused to nap despite an arsenal of binkies, sound machines, swaddles, strollers, gas drops, probiotics, and fervent prayer. Wearing him in the carrier and walking laps had been the only strategy that worked consistently. (My Fitbit step counts bore witness. I suppose all clouds have a silver lining.)
A zoomorphic thought had captured my imagination.
I am a tiger.
Do I feel powerful, magnificent, and ferocious? Do I patrol the backyard with the heavy paws of an apex predator? Do I send chipmunks and wascally wabbits fleeing my raised garden with fear and trembling? Sadly, no. My tigering is unworthy of David Attenborough’s narration.
Perhaps I mean it pop-culturally? I imagine my poster of Rocky Balboa hanging in the basement, proudly watching me (finally) use the bench press. In a few seconds, I’ll grunt dramatically and re-rack the bar, ready to guzzle a whey protein concoction of liquid machismo. Then I’ll blast a few cords on my air guitar as Survivor reminds me to “hang tough” and “stay hungry.”
Unfortunately, this also evades the truth. I had not been working out again, despite my best intentions. My exercise consisted of stroller walks, hoisting a toddler, and the occasional deep squat to rescue a dropped toy. I was more likely to get pink eye than catch the “Eye of the Tiger”.
I am a tiger at the zoo.
I am not wild, free, or powerful. I am diluted, domesticated, and desperate. I am a Sisyphean creature trudging a worn path on the perimeter of my enclosure. Now, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a feel-sorry-for-tigers-in-captivity-party. This is my own pity-party, complete with a shrieking baby soundtrack.
Oliver’s fuzzy head wriggled with frustration, pressing my sweaty shirt into my sternum.
“I get it buddy, I’m frustrated too!”
Despite the heat, my “warm-and-fuzzies” were in short supply. Instead of singing a sweet lullaby or talking to Oliver about the backyard flowers, I started whispering darkly in his ear.
“Shut up, shut up, you dumbass baby.”
I’m not proud of the mantra, yet I continued to pour out my bitterness on his pliable little ears. I justified my profane pleading knowing he would never remember it. After a few recitations, I felt his tiny hands gripping at my chest and I am hit with guilt. How can I be so angry with someone so innocent? How could I say such harsh words to someone homesick for the womb?
I am a terrible father.
Rational or not, justifiable or not, I was angry and miserable. I felt caged by my own choices. My patience had run dry, unlike Oliver’s inexhaustible tear ducts. And yet, I knew fatherhood is a privilege – a privilege not everyone is afforded. My focus was shifting, but I fought it. Let me wallow in my misery! But the moment had shattered, and I was forced now to think beyond myself.
Lara was suffering in ways I could not comprehend. She was struggling, not just with the healing and hormonal nosedive of postpartum reality, but with feeling connected to her new son. She viewed herself as a failure if she cannot soothe her child. “I’m his mother, he’s from my body, we should have a special bond. But I’m no different to him than anyone else! Where is the connection?”
I had tried to reassure her that she is a fantastic mother (the truth), but a potent mixture of baby blues, foreign feelings, and fatigue had taken a beating on her self-esteem. We knew better sleep would come, better eating would come, better temperament would come. We knew he wouldn’t be colicky forever. But the hard part of hope wasn’t the unknown if, it was the unknown when.
As my tired feet continued along the please-stop-crying path, I passed the shed outlined by our now exhausted daffodils. Their spent-up flowers were just hanging on, shells of their former optimistic selves. Am I still talking about daffodils? I looked at our patchy grass, not quite green everywhere. Perhaps someday our yard would be a sod story rather than a sob story. But for now, the grass would stay greener and the air more peaceful elsewhere.
The healthiest feature of the yard was the dandelions. No longer yellow exclamations, the pesky weeds were fluffy-headed ghosts. If I had just had the lung capacity to blow off all those seedheads at once, perhaps our wish for better sleep would have come true. Instead, I settled for kicking the nearest clump, watching my wish paratroop into the breeze. As the seeds rose towards the sunset, I noticed a peculiar site. Something was drifting down from the sky in a lazy spiral. As its descent continued, I noticed with astonishment that it was not something, but someone.
A little man, holding a large umbrella, was slowly falling towards the ground à la Mary Poppins. Unlike the magical English nanny, this chap had a flowing white beard and boisterous mustache. He was on track to land in our neighbor’s yard on the other side of a chain link fence. This cannot be real. I must be hallucinating!
I rubbed my eyes. The man was still there and getting closer.
Is this what a psychotic break feels like? I would have expected…I don’t know…more distress, or some sort of altered sensorium.
Diesel, our neighbor’s German Shepherd, also noticed the intruder. We can’t both be hallucinating. The large dog was whining and pacing around with his consternated snout in the air. He raised the alarm with a few deep, booming barks.
The little man touched down softly between a redbud tree and a birdbath. Diesel kept his distance at first, barking louder, then finally lunged forward. The man, probably no more than 3 feet tall, casually closed his umbrella and dusted off his pants, sending a shower of golden glitter into the air. As the dog closed in, I tried to yell, “Watch out,” but couldn’t form the words in time.
However, no horrific casualty came. The man sidestepped a collision like a seasoned matador. Then he ran across the yard towards a decorative ironwork bench and launched himself from the seat like a vaulting gymnast. He flipped and twisted through the air with ongoing disregard for gravity and landed on the roof of the neighbor’s shed.
Diesel was now on his hind legs, whimpering and pawing at the wall of the shed. The man took off his hat, a long trailing night cap, and dipped his hand inside. Then he blew a shower of golden sand from his hands down towards the big dog’s face. Diesel snorted, sneezed, pawed at his snout, and shook himself. Then he stretched his hindlegs, walked two and a half circles in the grass and laid down. Within seconds he was sound asleep. The man returned his hat to his head and nimbly hopped from the shed into our yard.
He landed a few feet in front of me on my walking path and gave a funny little bow in my direction. “Good evening, Michael…and little Oliver.”
Despite the crying infant I was carrying, I heard him clearly, as if his words bypassed my cochlear nerves and telepathed straight to my brain. I was dumbfounded. Who was this guy? What was this guy? How does he know me? I rubbed my eyes again, more forcefully. Still there. Review of systems: positive for visual and auditory hallucinations.
He was wearing an old-fashioned nightgown. It was a dark blue fabric, intricately embroidered with golden shapes and patterns. At first, I thought it was an illusion caused by fading daylight, but the more I looked, the more the images and scenes on his garment seemed to be moving. There were shooting stars and constellations, a crescent moon with a cow leaping over it and a wolf howling up from below, a ship riding the crashing waves near a glowing lighthouse, a sea dragon swimming, a submarine diving, a unicorn rearing on its hindlegs, a space shuttle, a stegosaurus, an erupting volcano, a mermaid combing her hair, an aspen tree quaking in the wind, a charging rhinoceros…and on and on. Each picture was enchantingly animated. The garb was mesmerizing, each thread pulling me into a story.
Below the nightgown, he wore a pair of worn leather slippers that had to be a century old. I would not have been surprised to see at least one hole in the bottom. Above the gown, he wore a long silk nightcap that tapered into a fluffy, white pom-pom. On his face was a pair of leather flight goggles. They were off duty, resting on his forehead, like a prop for Amelia Earhart.
The center of the gown was fastened by a series of hammered brass buttons. A golden chain emerged from his right lower pocket, threaded itself through a buttonhole, and then connected to a large golden pocket watch hanging near his waist. It seemed comically oversized, with multiple handles, dials and gears. It looked like something from an H.G. Wells novel, or perhaps a steampunk poster. Overall, his attire was whimsically handsome. It was clearly ridiculous, yet too authentic to be a costume.
He was probably a figment of sleep deprivation and delirium. Or maybe he was a side effect of my new migraine medication, perhaps both. Regardless of the cause, he could not be real.
“Uhh…can I help you?” I asked, trying to strike a balance between friendly and suspicious. After all, if he was real, he was trespassing, highly trained, and had just drugged a dog with some sort of aerosolized powder.
“Haha, such politeness!” said the man, “I’m actually here to help you. I’ve been assigned your case.”
“‘My case’? What do you mean? Who are you?” I asked.
He held both palms up and nodded, as if to reassure me this craziness was not actually crazy. (Or perhaps to agree that it was.) “I will explain, but please feel free to keep walking,” he said, waving me forward. “I don’t want to throw off your rhythm with little Oliver, it looks like he may be getting close to sleeping. I’ll walk beside you.”
He was right about Oliver. He was starting to settle, and his cries were infrequent now. I stepped forward cautiously on my tiger path. “What’s your name? Where did you come from?”
“Ahh so sorry, I almost forgot my introduction. This may help.” He pointed to a silver name plate on his chest labeled with gold letters, “Ole Lukøje.”
“Ole…what is that, Swedish?”
“Danish. But let’s see here…” He produced a white handkerchief from his pocket and rubbed it for a few seconds. After his polishing, I saw the letters had changed to English.
“The Sandman!? As in the guy from the fairy tales that makes kids go to sleep? No way…that’s not real!”
He chuckled joyfully, “Well, I’d like to think I’m real, are you real?” Then he pinched himself on the arm, as if trying to wake himself from a dream. His eyes twinkled with mirth.
“The nameplate is a little misleading. It’s a job title, not my actual name. I am a Sandman…certainly not the only one.”
“So there are more of you?”
“Oh yes, many! My name is Melvin. Technically, I’m a Dream Production and Slumber Engineer within the Sandman Organization. But Sandman is much easier to remember. We’re a rapidly expanding field. It’s hard for supply to meet demand these days.”
“You mean the supply of Sandmen to meet the demand for sleep?”
“Yes, exactly. With 8 billion people on the planet, there’s a lot of stress and anxiety to compete with, especially at night when the daytime distractions are gone. Insomnia is on the rise. Plus, there’s the Nightmares…they’re a nasty bunch to hold at bay. Always trying new tactics…” he shuddered.
“Wait, so what do you actually do?”
“Well, our goal is to bring quality slumber and pleasant dreams to as many people as possible. We usually focus on kiddos. The Boss has a special heart for children and good sleep is critical for early development and all that growing they do. We don’t usually get an adult assigned to our routes, but it does happen.”
“This is crazy! Do you actually sprinkle sand on people’s eyes?!”
“Yessir, that is the basic premise. Although it’s their eyelids, not directly on their eyes.”
“Wow! And that makes them sleep? Doesn’t it irritate their conjunctiva?”
“Ahh, good question Doc! Regular sand would be irritating. But our sand, quite the opposite. It’s anti-inflammatory and lubricating. It weighs down the eyelids while acting on the reticular activating system in the brainstem to promote sleep.”
“That sounds like big time infomercial quackery. Do I get an extra nap for free if I call now?”
“Ha…good one! I respect your caution. It’s magic and chemistry, not quackery. Our guys in R&D really know their stuff.”
“Ahh, so pixie dust, not snake oil!… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be snarky. I’ve been mean tonight. Poor Oliver got an earful earlier.”
“No offense taken. I’m around a lot of sleep deprived people…I don’t typically see people at their best.”
“I shouldn’t let it be an excuse though. Plenty of people have it harder than me.”
“Sure they do…but that doesn’t mean your struggles don’t matter. Perspective is healthy, but shame rarely is.”
“Melvin, you’ve got some good wisdom under that hat.”
“Oh no, I’m just really old…lots of learning from mistakes,” said Melvin sheepishly.
“Sorry, I derailed us. What’s the sand made of?
“Unfortunately, that’s proprietary information.”
“I’m pretty sure your entire existence is proprietary information! I promise I won’t try to make it!”
“Beyond the core recipe, each Sandperson makes their own sand with unique additives.”
“Oh cool, like how Jedi make their own lightsabers?”
“Uhh, I suppose so…I was never much into Star Trek.”
“Oh, that’s actually Star Waaaa…never mind.”
“I’m just messing with you Michael, I was working on Tatooine just last week in the dream world. Talk about sand! It may be a fictional place, but the chaffing was real!”
I laughed, but my head was spinning more and more. He puts people to sleep, designs dreams for them and then maintains the experience from inside each person’s altered consciousness. That is bonkers!
Melvin continued, “For my own sand, I like the classics. A little bit of river silt from the Euphrates, a pinch of ground dragon scale, and a little bit of crushed lunar rock. That’s it! Other Sandpeople get a lot fancier. Some of the young folks are getting really creative with essential oils these days, and then there’s the sports enthusiasts.”
“How do sports fit in?”
“I’ve seen sand collected from the traps at Augusta National, the third base line at Yankee Stadium, and the starting gate at Churchill Downs. Really passionate folks out there!”
“Gotcha, that’s awesome.”
“Once I combine my recipe with the proprietary mix from corporate, I like to add a grounding agent as a final touch. That helps prevent people from getting lost in the dream world and wake up in the right mindset.”
“Oh geez, that’s scary. What’s an example?”
“In your case, maybe I’d thrown in a bit of topsoil from your grandpa’s farm…something to remind you of what’s real and what self to come back to.”
“To be honest, I wouldn’t mind getting lost in Lalaland right now. Where have you guys been for this guy?” I nodded my chin towards the now sleeping Oliver.
“A fair question. It takes newborns a long time to be processed in the system and matched to their own Sandperson. It can take a few months to a year to get a specific Slumber Engineer assigned to a new child. Again, mostly a supply and demand issue.”
“That explains a lot!”
“Yes, and even then, the sand doesn’t work as well for young babies. Their metabolisms are so high they burn off the sand quickly. Plus, we can’t put them out too deeply because they each have unique feeding needs…sometimes they’re just not ready to sleep through the night yet, so we hold off until The Boss gives the green light.”
“So how is it that I’ve never seen one of you before now?”
“That technology is another trade secret, but it’s not quite as amazing as you might think. We don’t have invisibility cloaks, or mind-wipers, or shrink rays. You simply don’t have time to see us.”
“What does that mean? You guys are just really fast?”
“In a way, yes. We use our pocket watches to create a Time Lag Bubble – an invisible four-dimensional construct that alters the flow of time around us relative to everything else in our environment.”
“You lost me.”
“Basically, from our perspective, we move at a normal speed in the bubble. However, from your perspective, we are moving impossible quickly. We are present at the encounter for a much shorter range of time than you can see or process.”
“So, you essentially pause time?”
“Not entirely. We can’t stop time, or travel back in time, but we can slow time down so much that we are able to walk right up to people without them ever noticing. They’re virtually frozen in comparison. A single human blink could take a few hours of Lag Bubble time. That keeps us hidden and allows us to fit in hundreds of visits per night on our routes.”
“Oh man, this is a lot to take in. Have you ever put me to sleep?”
“Yes, I have helped you fall asleep before, mostly when you were a toddler…not that you always stayed asleep. Your sister was always the better sleeper. A Sandman’s dream, that child!”
I rubbed my temples. “I assume there’s not a consent form or waiver you get signed in order to sand people?” (Do mythologic creatures fear litigation?)
“No, there is no consent process. It may seem weird coming from your background. Most people don’t know we exist, so we operate in a unique workspace when it comes to the autonomy of our clients and their parents. From an ethics standpoint, we’re not testing new medications or drugs. We’re dispensing plain ole sleep…nothing more, nothing less. Sand has existed as long as sleep has existed. It’s just a behind-the-scenes part of the natural process.”
“Why do you guys stay hidden then?”
“We don’t need people trying to capture a Sandperson for their own personal gain. Sleep should never be weaponized. Even our pocket watches self-destruct if they fall into the wrong hands.”
“I didn’t think about that. Every military in the world would love to get their hands on one of those watches. If it’s so risky to be seen, why are you showing yourself to me now?”
“For starters, you don’t believe this is real anyway!’ Melvin had that twinkle in his eye again. “My mission today is about more than sleep. Your family has been special to me for a long time. First it was you and your sister, but now I’m Samuel’s personal Sandman and hopefully, I’ll get assigned Oliver too…those applications are still pending.”
“Wait, you’re Sam’s Sandman! Is that why he sleeps so well?”
“Sam has been entrusted to me, but the good sleeping habits are mostly him. I just give a little nudge here and there. I usually sprinkle my sand while you’re singing that second verse of Baby Beluga …and voila, you never see a thing.”
“Wow, I apologize that you have to listen to my singing!”
“Remember, I’m only there for a couple nanoseconds…so my eardrums only bleed a little!”
Samuel was just about to turn two years old, which means he was coming up on his 730th rendition of Baby Beluga as part of his bedtime routine. I should not have been surprised that Melvin was familiar with our nighttime ritual. He seemed familiar with everything.
“To summarize,” I said, trying to piece everything together, “you’re a benevolent supernatural creature from an unseen realm that manipulates the flow of time to help mortal children get better sleep and keep evil dreams at bay?”
“I suppose that would be a fairly accurate summary.”
“So, you’re a guardian angel for sleep?”
“Now that’s very flattering, but I’m just another person trying to make a good mark on the world. I leave the job titles up to The Boss.”
A wrestling and whimper at my chest suddenly reminded me to keep walking. Oliver’s big blue eyes had opened and were staring into space under his furrowed brow. He reminded me of the present reality, and why I was in the backyard in the first place. I could feel the tiger stirring.
“Melvin, why are you here if it’s not to help Oliver sleep?’
He dodged the direct question and answered with his own, “What do you love about Oliver?”
“Now that’s a loaded question…honestly, not much right now.” I sighed deeply, searching for more specifics. “I’m struggling to feel affection for him or a deep connection. He’s too young to smile. He cries all the time. He makes everything harder for our family. He doesn’t sleep well, or eat well, and for the past two weeks he never seems happy. I know he’s a baby. I shouldn’t value him only for his potential. He’s a precious human life. He doesn’t exist for my own gratification, but my feelings and beliefs about him just aren’t in sync at the moment. I’m a tangled ball of incongruous emotions. People keep saying to cherish this time because we’ll miss it someday. But I’m not enjoying anything about it. I just want to fast-forward to where he sleeps through the night and eats without such a fuss.”
I paused for a second, kicked another dandelion, and then continued with my stream of thoughts and complaints. “I go back and forth between being patient with him and then having no patience at all. I’m frustrated with him and myself. Days like today I’ve had such harsh thoughts towards him, it makes me feel like a terrible parent and a terrible person. I really do want what’s best for him…but I can’t even figure out what that is most of the time!”
I stopped talking and took a deep breath, my inhalation squeezing Oliver’s body tighter to my chest. I realized my rambling never answered the question.
Melvin responded gently, “I’m not here to pass judgment. I’m here to help you unlock the layers of your feelings. I want you to see the forest again, instead of feeling lost in the trees. I know that you love him, and sometimes it can be helpful to step back and name those things that you love about someone.”
“Let’s see…first, I love that he’s a mixture of me and Lara. More than that, he’s a mixture of all the people that led to me, and all the people that led to her. He’s a living, breathing product of our love and relationship. I guess that’s kinda narcissistic, thinking about my own family legacy and all that, but I think it’s cool that two different stories merge to form a new story with each child born.”
Melvin smiled and nodded. “As someone who has seen a lot of humans come and go, watching the next generation enter the world and grow up has always been a joy for me. It’s not selfish to appreciate your family tree or your roots. Love of family only becomes a problem when people value their own family tree over everyone else’s. We can appreciate the path we came from without demeaning other paths or ignoring the flaws that have existed in all pathways…including our own.”
“Yeah, that’s true. Humility goes a long way.”
“What else do you love about Oliver? Maybe think more simply, the small joys.”
“I’d say his whole body is basically a small joy…except maybe his lungs, those things are too powerful for their own good,” I said with a laugh. “I love his small hands, how they can latch on to my finger. I love the smell of his fuzzy head, especially after the bath. I love his squirming feet, his expressive brow, and his startle reflex when we hit a bump in the stroller. I love his warm body in the carrier when he does fall asleep. It’s a joy to have him cuddled up there, listening to my heartbeat, even if I do get sweat all over his head. I love that he made Sam a big brother. It’s fun to watch them together. Sam’s always trying to kiss his head and set toys on top of him. He’s been such a good sport so far. I really hope they have a close bond throughout their lives.”
“I hope so too,” said Melvin. “Those are all wonderful things. The love that parents have for their children is complex and simple at the same time. Powerful, imperfect, and incredibly valuable.”
“We’re still so early in the parenting journey, I just hope we do a decent enough job for them.”
“Well, I never had children myself, so take my advice with a grain of sand,” he winked. “But I like to tell parents to be lighthouses, not lightbulbs.”
“Lighthouses? I’ve never heard that.”
“The purest forms of love are unconditional. They don’t have loose wiring. They don’t burn out with repeated use. They’re not fragile. They are signals of safety and refuge that shine in the calm and the storms. The ships go on their own adventures. The waters will get choppy. But the light stays on no matter what.”
As he spoke, my eyes were drawn back to his nightgown and the moving pictures of golden thread. There it was again, the lighthouse, calling to the small ship sailing on the tossing waves. I looked down at Oliver and sighed deeply. I’m sorry little buddy. I will try harder to be a lighthouse. I will try harder to express tenderness, kindness, and patience. I will focus on love, even knowing I will fail you over and over.
I am your father. I am hopeful.
“Thank you, Melvin. I appreciate everything you…” I trailed off, realizing he was gone. I was alone with Oliver in the backyard. Next door, Diesel was sitting up and looking perplexed. I made eye contact with the dog and shrugged. His tail wagged. The sliding glass door opened behind me. Lara stepped onto the deck.
“I got Sam to bed, how’re you guys doing?
“We’re good out here,” I said. “Oliver fell asleep a few minutes ago.”
Dr. Marshall Moyer is an Internal Medicine Physician working as a Hospitalist and Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas Medical Center. He is a husband and father of two young boys, a responsibility that he finds fascinating, enjoyable and challenging. He is an emerging writer working to transition his creative writing from a hobby he enjoys privately, to an endeavor he can share with others. He has previously been published to a limited audience via the Carol A. Bowman Creative Writing Contest and the Carver College of Medicine Poetry Contest at the University of Iowa. His poem Rosary was published in JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association) in January 2024. He enjoys writing poetry, short stories, and is currently working on his first novel length project.