Робин Кук - The Year of the Intern

Before I could disappear into the doctors’ room again, a baby and an old man came in simultaneously. The mother had dropped the baby on its arm, which was a little swollen, and the man had strained his back several days before. With the baby and the man up in X-ray, I fell asleep in a chair by the counter, smack in the center of the ER. When my relief came to take over, he let me sleep on. Forty-five minutes later I woke up feeling as bad as before, but knowing that this time I could go back to my own bed. Where are the television cameras now? I mused, trudging along home looking like a Jackson Pollock action painting made of dried mucus, vomit, and blood. It was a strange and wonderful feeling to take off my clothes and slide between the cool, slightly coarse sheets.

Thus my twenty-four hours off began. After more than a month of the ER routine, I was a mental and physical shamble. I became lucid around lunchtime, when I was waked by a combination of the birds, the sun, and hunger. A shave and shower made me feel somewhat human, and by the time I had walked over for lunch in the warm noonday sun, I was back in the real world again.

Following lunch, I succumbed to an imperative somewhere in me to get away from the hospital. More sleep would have been the prudent course, but I had discovered through experience that, no matter how tired I was, the general afternoon din around my quarters would keep me awake. So I put on my bathing trunks, loaded the surfboard on to my car, threw some medical books into the back seat, and took off for the beach.

It was a relief to drive out there and let the clutter of colors and movement capture my mind. People seemed to be everywhere, all of them strangely whole and healthy. In the hospital, one often feels that everybody in the world has diarrhea or a chest pain. But there they were, busily and happily walking around, laughter mixing with the physical activity, suntans, and brightly flashing bikinis. These people looked so normal. With my morose thoughts, I was somehow an outsider, not belonging. Too tired to swim or play volleyball, I propped myself up against the surfboard, facing the sun, and let the scene roll by.

I didn’t try to talk to anybody and no one approached me, which was just as well. I was so full of the ER that I would quickly have turned off anybody in his right mind with my yammer about blood and broken bones. But that wouldn’t be my real subject; my real subject would be me — my anger, exhaustion, and fear. Come on, now, I thought, too many dire and dramatic nouns; stop wallowing in self-pity. That’s about all you’ve been doing lately, feeling sorry for yourself. So what if it’s a crappy deal being an intern? Change it if you can, but stop feeling sorry for yourself. That doesn’t help anybody, least of all you. I still wished, however, that our culture would take some of the pressure off by realizing that a white coat and a stethoscope do not confer wisdom. Much less instant nobility.

Well, screw it. I’d take a nap instead.

I fell asleep there in the sun by myself, in the middle of all that gaiety and laughter. Actually, this happened every afternoon I was off during the period of ER duty. Sleep in the morning, eat, sleep in the afternoon, eat. Do nothing for a while, then sleep, only to wake and find the twenty-four-hours-on cycle beginning again, wondering where the time had gone. When I awoke it was late afternoon; the people had thinned out and the sun was much weaker. No one bothered me as I continued to sit and look at the sun on the water. It was like watching a bonfire. Its activity seemed an excuse for my stillness and undirected thought. Not that I was unconscious; everything around me came into my mind — all movement, sound, and color. I just wasn’t connecting.

Hastings had to wave his hand in front of my face a few times before I got him into perspective. Surf? Sure, why not, if I could get myself and my board down to the water. I felt immobile, as if the sun had sapped all my remaining strength. This was another part of the afternoon-off routine. Hastings would meet me down at the beach, quite late, and we’d surf, not talking to each other except to say a few words like “outside” if a large wave was coming. I didn’t understand why we made such elaborate plans to meet and then ignored each other. But both of us liked it that way.

Paddling out was the high point of the day, a kind of catharsis. I felt my body and mind join again. I used my arms and feet to paddle, feeling the strength that was there and the touch of water under me, cool and gently moving. The expanse of the ocean, spreading to apparent infinity around me, made me feel small yet real, the true center. People vanished; their voices changed, became muted and distant as they were swept off by the waves. The setting sun turned the whole western sky into warm, soft oranges and reds reflecting millions of times from the surface of the water, like a Claude Monet painting. To the east, silver blues and violets began to appear among the pinks and faraway greens. Sailboats were dotted around haphazardly, little dabs of color against water and sky. The island rose up sharply from the water’s edge, and sunlight cast contrasting shadows among the canyons, creating a texture as soft as velvet, making the soaring ridges fly like buttresses off a Gothic cathedral. Deep violet clouds hovered over the island, concealing the peaks, forming the prismatic reflections of rainbows in the shadows of the valleys. Whatever effect it may have on others, this beauty cradled me, drained all other thoughts and made me whole again.

The waves added to the atmosphere with their impetuosity and rhythm; one minute an organized vibration of harmonic motion, the next a swirling mass of senseless confusion. I caught one of the waves. I felt its power, the wind and the sound. Twisting as the board responded, I made my body work against the force to fall; speed and crucial milliseconds. Down the wave and then a twist of my torso, running my hand along the sheer wall of water and the crash and swirl, yet still standing, my feet on the board lost beneath a swirl of white foam. Finally the sudden kickout, with a violent but controlled backward twist, made me want to shout with the joy of being alive.

Darkness erased the scene slowly and drove us back to shore. Hastings went his way and I mine, to the hospital for a shower. Back in the geometric, sanitized world of clean floors, utilitarian showers, and fluorescent lights, I dressed and left the grounds again. Driving up Mount Tantalus, I pleasantly anticipated the night to come.

Her name was Nancy Shepard, and I had met her — how else? — through the hospital. Her father had been a gall-bladder patient whose progress I followed closely after assisting a private M.D. in the operation. Every time I changed his dressing, he had mentioned that he wanted me to meet his daughter, retelling how she had gone to Smith and spent a year at Boston University working on a master’s degree in African history. In truth, I grew a little tired of hearing the stories, although I remained interested in meeting her. Finally, the day before her father left the hospital, she had appeared, and she was nice — very. In fact, she looked a little like another girl from Smith I had dated while I was in college. Anyway, we went to the beach a few times, which we both enjoyed. She could talk about almost anything; it was fun to be with someone educated and intelligent. A political-science major, she was fond of arguing heatedly over small points of government, especially about Africa. Despite a number of successful dates and my admiration for her, I stopped asking her out very often, mostly because of lethargy and lack of time. In fact, that night’s invitation to dinner had come out of the blue. Not that I didn’t want to see Nancy. I just never got around to it — and by then Joyce had become pretty convenient.