evidence: Its breach of distance between clinical reality and patient experience reminds us of several things: first, that care can happen simply by being with patients even when, as in the case of COVID-19, cure eludes us. Its implied buzzing evokes the sounds of other languages, times, histories, and cultures that clinicians must strain to hear if they notice them at all. Finally, the fly’s transgression into the antiseptic space of the hospital room is a reminder of the realities of nature and death, the conflict between the hygienic orderly world of health care spaces, enforced now by unending handwashing and rigid PPE protocols, and the messiness of grieving families and of near-death. Physicians especially struggle to overcome barriers to communication caused not just by cultural difference, but by the technologies and technological thinking we deploy. The poem animates what many health care workers may feel these days imposing strict isolation on coronavirus patients as ultimately they suffer and die alone, and all that these patients may see and hear in their minds beyond the sterility, in contrast with the clamor of the hospital.