#post-call

I love being the resident. How, at the end of the day, everyone else goes home. Case managers and attendings and pharmacists and even nurses, at the end of their shift. But I don’t leave until the work gets done. I beg pharmacies and insurance companies, schedule outpatient appointments, arrange for transportation, talk down stubborn family members, write and rewrite prescriptions, as if by sheer force of will I can heal and protect my patients. I reason and plead and say it matter-of-fact. I am here, at the end of the day, to make sure that what needs to get done is done, to do the dirty work, to explain to an angry family member for the 10th time why the procedure has been delayed, to call with updates, to take a deep breath in and say that even though we did everything we could to avoid it, it’s time for the breathing tube. 

I’m tired. It’s hard to write because my thoughts come sluggish and slow. I forget the grace of language, its liquidity, how to find a feeling and encircle it gently without pinning it down. I don’t know the day of the week anymore, whether its night or day, early morning or late evening. I drift along, all brain and no body, falling into a dead dog sleep when my work is done. 

I fell in love with the idea of being a doctor the summer after college, when I was so full of despair that it was intoxicating to lose myself in someone else’s life. In the ensuing years I’ve created a life for myself that I have no desire to escape from, so this getting-lost feels good but in a different way than it did before. A. tells me to be careful, that the MICU is addicting. There’s nothing to flee, my life overflowing with love, but there’s something about dedicating one’s waking hours to a singular purpose that still quenches a complicated thirst, a long tongue on the salt-lick.