The board is set…

“…the pieces are moving. We come to it at last, the great battle of our time.”

So I’ve been quoting Tolkien-via-Gandalf a lot lately… forgive the propensity for melodrama, but it seems to fit.

How to describe the feeling in Washington today – tension? Anticipation? Anxiety? Energy? Perhaps energy best describes it, simply because whatever this is makes you more tired by its very presence. There are a lot of exhausted people around the Hill right now, of which I am one. It’s not just health staff, it’s anyone and everyone who has had to pick up the phone in the last week. The sense of inevitability surrounding us via the press and the papers is undercut by the nagging hope: could we really stop this?

And then comes the feeling no one wants to admit, the notion that more than anything we just want this to be over. For those of us who have been eating, breathing, sleeping healthcare for the last nine months, the infusion of energy into the issue by newcomers feels a lot like more work. Sort of like being asked to sprint a mile after running the marathon. Fever pitch, that’s what it is, and when you have a fever you can’t think of anything but the fever breaking.

I want so much to have the spirit and the will to fight. No matter what happens, the new few days will be an historic watershed. I don’t want to look back and see a younger me on the sidelines, not when I was in a position to act. So now it is a matter of hanging in there… of finishing well.

The amendments are filed. The Rules meeting is underway. The board is set, the pieces are moving...