Lindsay Ryan

The bus smashed into him last month, when he was crossing the street with his wheelchair. By the time he made it to the public hospital in California where I work as a doctor, two quarts of blood had hemorrhaged into one of his thighs, where a tender football-shaped bulge distorted the skin. He remembered his view of the windshield as the bus bore down, then, as he toppled, of the vehicle’s dirty underbelly. He was convinced he’d die.
He didn’t.

The last time I tried to wait out the pandemic, I drove south. My dog and I traveled nine hours from San Francisco to the Anza-Borrego Desert, which sprawls over more than half a million acres near the Mexican border. Most of that territory is untouched wilderness, rocky washes home to deer, pumas, and golden eagles.The place felt solitary. That’s why I chose it. I work as a doctor in an emergency room, a hospital, and an HIV clinic.