A patient is dying of AIDS. The physician-speaker repositions a drain in the patient's wound, taking care "to slap on latex gloves" before he does so. Another physician, "a hypocrite / Across the room complains that it's her right / To walk away . . . ." She acknowledges no obligation as a physician to care for this patient. Does she think it is too risky? What kind of risk? Might contact with this dying man somehow upset her ordered world and expose her vulnerability? Of course, nothing she could do "Could save him now." Even the physician-speaker must leave the patient "pleading" and continue with his other work: "There's too much to do."