Another busy day: admission after admission, a behavioral response, desatting 3-year-old transferred from the PICU this morning, 10 notes to write, update the hospital courses, review the labs ordered for the morning, sign out to the night team, call the new interns and walk them through each patient, and then out in the sunlight where you call one of your oldest friends on the drive home, up the apartment stairs where I. is watering your plants and then, just-like-that, intern year is over!
No part of it has been easy but nothing was impossible. In a year I become fluent in a language I’ve studied for years, things become because muscle-memory and second nature. In a year I grieve and give-up, sob uncontrollably on a bench outside of a baseball game and then in my friend’s arms, curse all manner of societal forces and case managers, let things show on my face that I shouldn’t. I am ground down, learned-helpless, exhausted, wounded.
I lose my ability to put a positive spin on things at the end of the sentence. Sometimes I say “today sucked,” and have nothing to follow it with, no optimism for tomorrow, no silver lining.
But it’s still summer, and last week we spread out a blanket on the grass and the band played and the children ran around on their healthy limbs, not scared of me, parents blissfully only half-aware of their movements. I soak in every minute that I’m not in the hospital. I meet someone that my heart jumps toward, dizzyingly. I’m astounded to realize that there are the old movements of love and vulnerability that I haven’t forgotten.
And tonight I start on nights on one of the busiest services. I’ve been afraid and anxious for months. I wasn’t ready for intern year and I’m not ready for this, either, but I do need a change.
