Countertransference
He raises his head, fingers curled gently
around the tiny ankle of the child on the bed –
“I lost my grandson last year,” he says,
quiet undertone to
rustle of sheets from the next room over.
“He was twenty-five.”
His hands are firm, lined with
a soft sadness in how they move,
molasses-slow, deliberate stretches, reaching
for invisible hands he can no longer touch.
I, too, know the phantom of
hands I cannot hold anymore. The
ghost of losing someone who nestled a home in
my heart in spite of gaps in generation,
someone who taught me to behold beauty in
wispy steams of freshly brewed coffee,
pitchy string instrumentals amidst stereo static
I am so sorry, I hear my voice say,
no doubt an echo
of overused platitudes.
I am of the same generation as the
boy this man lost, the
devastation of an ending
he has been forced to
caress in his palms, carry
with him home every night,
every room he enters, every child
he has watched grow up
from their tiny-ankle ages
They tell us our own
projections onto patients
is countertransference.
But when I hand this man his papers,
stiff text in narrow margins,
our fingers brush
for a brief moment
It is not a transfer but an
understanding – our taciturn agreement
to remain silent, together, heavy with
the knowledge of
having to sit with the space
someone we loved once occupied,
grief overused with each passing year.
The child on the bed reaches
for me, gaze bright and questioning.
I offer him a finger. He grasps it,
small palms warm and dry
the sweet innocence of unknowing
“Hi,” he quips. Beside him, his grandfather’s brows furrow.
And how are you? I ask, words
stale on my tongue,
but he laughs, crooked teeth, exclamatory and
loud, the kind of loudness I have unlearned, and
it feels like an answer to a brand-new question.
A brand-new blossom of beauty in my chest –
the first sip of dark roast on my lips,
The ghost of my grandfather’s hands
grasping mine, here in the broken silence.
“Countertransference” is a 2025 National Hospitalist Day HM Voices Contest Winner.
Dr. Li is an academic hospitalist at Grady Memorial Hospital and an assistant professor at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. She currently serves on the editorial board of Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine.