The Narrative Bridge conference was a pleasure and an inspiration to attend: excitingly interdisciplinary, refreshingly hands-on, AND held in a city (Charleston, SC) NOT in the grip of sub-sub-zero temperatures. Highlights included: some amateur theatricals (a “reader’s theatre” event, organised by Mahala Yates Stripling, in which a handful of volunteers, myself included, performed a reading of a short play by Richard Selzer); Lauren Mitchell’s meditation on “The Anatomy of Bearing Witness: Surgical Culture, Visual Humility, and Narrative”; and, most movingly, a talk by Shannon Richards-Slaughter entitled “The Hospital and the Blues: ‘St. James Infirmary’ and the Existential Condition of Illness and Death.”