Skybridge

1. Kevin P. Eaton⇑

+ Author Affiliations

1. From the Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX.

1. Corresponding author: Kevin P. Eaton, MD, Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, TX 77030; e-mail: kpeaton@bcm.edu.

The expanse of America collapses here in this medical center. When a surgeon opens a calcified artery, salt pours from dry bulk containers on Long Beach. When kids play basketball in Jackson Park, hearts beat again with every dribble. Each building is a different city. Skybridges take us all across America, coast to coast in just one afternoon.

She wanted to go to San Francisco. A new grandmother, she told me. Her PET scan mapped the power grid along the East Coast, now dusk.

A shortcut, I told her, to beat the setting sun. I hugged her at the door, and through falling tears, she melted like watercolor over the sun-painted skybridge– the one coursing through the Sierra Nevada as it crosses over Main Street. She'd be West before I could close her chart, before I would stop waving.