There are many different ways in which people’s movement through our internal medicine practice at 652 Boston Post Road has been considered; the architect contemplated access to amenities, the office manager pondered workspace, and the infection control committee studied respiratory particle physics. For most people, though, these space-governing principles are not front of mind. Rather, people enter preoccupied with cholesterol ratios or the rash creeping across their palm.

As patients are ushered into exam rooms, a process of information gathering takes place. As blood pressure, surgical history, and today’s concern are gathered, the body’s past is interwoven with the immediate present. And appropriately so, for the body carries it all.

Patients bring with them in equal measure the emotional and physical weights of existing in the world. In the exam room, for a moment in their day, they are not the chemist, mother, or student; they are a body asking for relief. Pulling on socks and refolding medication lists, patients repackage themselves to reenter the world at the end of the visit. Our responsibility is to interpret and protect these visits as brief chapters that form a cohesive narrative and inch the story forward.

The providers walk most afternoons. Always the same route: a loop around the graveyard. Here, people’s lives are distilled into names and dates. Rather than creating a sense of futility about our work, this walk reminds of the timelessness of the compassion which drives it. The primary care office has been a community anchor point for centuries, and while medical knowledge has advanced, the tenet that all are welcome, that there is no threshold for illness or health one must achieve in order to be seen, remains unchanged. The work that occurs within the rooms and hallways of that unassuming office building is profoundly, critically human.

Maya Bartel

Guilford

Maya Bartel is a ARPN at Family Practice Associates in Guilford.