First Place: Stephanie B Benjamin, MD

My sister Janna is in her wheelchair, my mom gently singing to her. My Brother Geoffrey is lying nearby in his hospital bed. Peeking in through the plastic bars, looking at his small fists curled up against his forearms, I ask my mom, "Why can't the doctors make them better?" As they lay dying my four-year-old brain thinks indignantly, “If I were a doctor, I would fix my siblings.”

Flipping around on the floor, then high on the balance beam, then flying over the vault, and then swinging around the uneven bars. My red velour competition leotard sparkles. I've just turned eight. Concentration is key. An inch miscalculation and I will fall and it will hurt- a lot. Everyone is watching with baited breath. The pressure heightens the stakes, making it more fun.

I watch concerned as my sister Felissa lays crying on an emergency department hospital bed. Her right thigh is blistered and raw from a fresh scald burn, the result of a poorly balanced pot of hot tea slipping off the edge of a lazy Susan at a Chinese food restaurant. I hold her hand. My ten-year-old brain is mesmerized, watching the dead skin carefully get debrided and her wound gently dressed in bright white gauze.

Nothing but anger exists when my siblings die. First my brother Geoffrey, followed by sweet Janna a few years later. What other tween has already been to so many funerals? I feel alone. And screw medicine. It's useless. What's the point? I'm going to be a writer instead.

I am slowly lifted 152 feet into the air by a crane. The adrenaline pulses through me as I free fall downwards towards the target sign painted on the ground. The bungee cord tugs on my harness, swinging me to safety at the last moment. Don't tell my parents I went bungee jumping in high school.