Turn Up
The walls are pale and almost as solid as the curtain swallowing a hospital bed, but the illusion is broken by anatomy charts and licenses, medical degrees and vacation photographs. In the closest image the doctor demonstrates how to reveal one’s teeth by tightening the cheek muscles, with assistance from his wife, apparently trying to express happiness while violating some foreign shoreline. In another his expression is somber as he reclines in the shadow of a tree, resigned to domestic soil pressing itself against him. His youthfulness in these photos belies either his narcissist tendencies, or his workaholism preventing time off from his practice—
—and mother. She lay in that exact spot many a time, pretending a disposable medical gown draped over her nudity meant she was not
