Whenever I’m paralyzed about making a big decision, I ask myself, “What is the story I want to tell with my life?” Makes it easier.
from Felicia Day, on Twitter
Friday I walked into the meat section in Krogers and felt like someone had punched me in the gut.
There, taped up on one of the signs used to advertise daily specials and post flyers, were large full-color photographs of the towers burning. Various angles were represented, and a shot of the Pentagon tossed in for good measure. This was next to the case of frozen meat products with a banner over it proclaiming that the store was thanking the local firehouses, which I think somehow related to a sale on beef. I’m not entirely certain of the connection, because (since I felt punched in the gut) I quickly moved on.
On September 11, I was a volunteer emergency medical technician based in a rescue station just outside DC. I was recalled to station for September 11th and 12th, and I spent those two days watching what happens when everyone wants to help and absolutely nothing can be done anymore. I have a vivid memory of the television lounge crammed with firefighters and EMS personnel, all staring at the burning wreckage. I remember someone asking why more trucks (fire and ambulance) weren’t going to the Pentagon, since our station was sending our resources there as well, and the very blunt answer, “Because there’s nobody to save.”
I remember what the absence of airplanes sounds like, sitting under the Dulles flight path.
I remember that someone in Northern Virginia, separate from the Pentagon, had a heart attack that morning and died, despite the efforts of the rescue squad that showed up to help him.
I remember that a little girl who lived across the street from our station made brownies to bring to us, because she was overwhelmed with the need to do something. I remember also that we had to throw them away because of policies about station security in a time of high alert.
I remember these things often. 9/11 was a catalyst for change in my life; it is what prompted me to seriously consider medicine, and affected my decision to enter the Air Force. I don’t know if I would be an MD or a Captain right now if I had not been in that station on the eleventh and twelfth. It is not just a day in my life, it is something that changed the entire course, a turning point, a fork in the road.
For the last few weeks, I have been avoiding as much of the coverage of the anniversary as possible. It isn’t that I don’t want to remember, or that I don’t think it is worthy of commemoration. My issue is rather that I don’t think 9/11 images belong next to a case of frozen meat, even if you put star-spangled bunting all over it. I don’t want a day of Republicans pointing fingers at weak, liberal Democrats who want to let the terrorists win, or of Democrats pointing fingers at fear-mongering, right-wing Republicans who want to let the terrorists win. I don’t want sales at department stores, and I don’t want morose, melodramatic clothes-rending while we all debate who lost more, who hurts more, who has more “right” to be upset on this day.
This day is sacred to everyone. This day changed the world, not just the US. This day was a turning point in many lives, not just mine. It is right to be solemn today, and it is also right to realize that in the last 10 years, we have moved forward even if we have not entirely moved on. My hope is that somewhere in the media circus of this anniversary, each of us is able to find peace with where we have been and where we are going. I think for most people I know, 9/11 crystalized what is truly important in our lives — I wish that today we could reclaim that focus, re-prioritize back to where we were that morning. Hug your loved ones, forgive the petty squabbles, make the big decisions in your life with commitment and faith. Let this be the legacy of that horrific day, and let us all move on together.
I am not dead. Just in case that was in doubt. Sometimes I feel like I am dead, of course, or very near it, and there have been a few painful moments over the last two months during which I wished I were dead, but all of that aside, I am decidedly not dead.
I have been an intern for almost two months. That means there are approximately ten months standing between me and no longer being an internal medicine intern. The fact that I think about it that way has nothing to do with anything except that intern year, as a rule, sucks. Now, the program I am in is wonderful. The team I am currently working with, I wish I could keep for the rest of the year because they are truly wonderful people. The work is interesting, to a point. It’s just that it keeps coming, and coming, and coming. The thing is, there’s always more to be done, always a test I’m waiting for, always a consult pending, always something that, if I let it, would keep me in the hospital. I hate being there for nearly 80 hours a week, but there are so many days when it takes a colleague telling me flat out that I should leave in order for me to do it.
The reward of hearing a patient tell me that I’m a good doctor, or that they wish I could be their doctor after they leave the hospital, or that they want to hear what I think about a situation — that is immeasurable. It’s everything I told myself it would be while I was fighting my way through the last ten years. And yet, I am exhausted, and there are still ten months of this to go, and then the rest of residency.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Yeah, I think that about sums it up.
Intern year does suck, bigtime. But it’s also amazing. How crazy is that?
I should be in bed, but I’m still awake and it seemed remiss to not comment on tonight, if only briefly.
In the morning, I will get up and put on what BWB and I affectionately call “grown-up clothes”, also known as work-appropriate attire. I will then go to the hall closet and take out the coat I spent most of the evening prepping. It is a long, white lab coat with my name embroidered on the right side with the initials MD after it, and the name of my hospital on the other. My ID badge is already attached to the lapel, my prescription pad is in one pocket, a pocket reference text in another, and still another holds a granola bar, my wallet, and some chewing gum. Other than looking terribly new, it is a bona fide doctor’s coat, and it is mine.
My friend C recently graduated from nursing school and has been having approximately the same experience as I have during orientation the last few weeks. We’ve been texting each other photographs of ourselves in our new attire, pictures of our ID badges that indicate our new positions, and sharing virtual glee over being given our signature stamp — because the stamp makes everything official.
Today I sent him a photo of myself in my coat, following one from him in his nursing uniform. He responded back, “So official and profesional!! Do you think they can see our fear deep down?”
“I sure hope not!!”
Because it’s true. I’m quaking in my cute yet sensible flats. Today I was introduced to a patient as “Dr. Girl” for the first time, and I think my heart skipped a few beats with shock. What if I can’t remember anything I’ve learned in medical school? What if the senior doctors think I am an idiot? What if I AM an idiot? What if I screw up someone’s medication? What if I make a mistake? There are so many systems in place to prevent anything major from happening that I know it’s not really worth worrying about, but the part where I look like a fool? That seems less unlikely.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited, too, and proud to have made it to this point. But tonight my nerves are reigning supreme, and that is why I am still awake at this late hour. I am afraid of letting everyone else down, but I think even more than that I am afraid of disappointing myself, having come this far.
But there’s no getting around it. In a few very short hours, the time will arrive and so will I, in whatever condition five hours of sleep and the butterflies in my stomach allow.
Tomorrow morning, when I walk into the hospital as doctor (a lowly intern, but still a doctor), it will be the end of a very, very long road. Through that door, I will take the first steps into the next phase of the journey, in my very new, very long coat.
In all of the talk leading up to our move, BWB has been very focused on it only being for a year. It’s been so heart-wrenching to say goodbye to our friends and to leave our city that he kept telling people we would be back next year. And hopefully, we will be. We have our fingers crossed that the match this year will finally work out for us, and that we’ll find ourselves back in New Orleans again this time next June.
Still, the way he kept saying it was bothering me, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. After some thought, I came up with an answer.
When I was four, we moved from a small town to a small city. It was supposed to be just for a year or two, and so I approached the situation as temporary. It wasn’t until six years later, when we moved from one permanent house to another, that it dawned on me that we were not, in fact, moving back to the small town I still for some reason thought of as home. This perception of impermanence colored how I interacted with the city I grew up in. After watching the documentary BRATS: Our Journey Home with my father, I realized that not only did this movie give me insight into his childhood, but it explained a little bit about mine, too. The expectation of leaving made it harder to feel rooted to any place or person, even though in my case that expectation was false.
It would be easy to approach New City with this same transience, to resist putting down any solid foundations or making any solid connections here. After all, we think we’re only going to be here for a year. Or will it be three years? Or five? It could be five. And even if it is a year, aren’t we doing a disservice to ourselves to spend a year feeling disconnected and disjointed? I brought this up with BWB, and we talked about it.
It’s true that this town is only going to be home for a year. It is, however, still going to be home. Rather than rest here only long enough to take off again, we have made the decision to land here with our full weight, build a nest, and settle in. It might make leaving harder when we go, but the time between now and then will be richer for it.
This afternoon, my phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Yes, is this White Horse Girl?”
“…yes?”
“And did you go to New Orleans University?”
“……yes?”
“And are you in New City right now?”
“…who is this?”
“Oh, this is Angel from the Hospital Public Safety. We found your keys.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
At this point, I scrambled through my purse to establish that, in fact, my keys were missing. We were in BWB’s car, and had long since left the hospital lot, so I had no idea they weren’t still safely tucked in. I still have no idea how they fell out, but lo and behold, they had.
“Yes, well, it was quite difficult to find you. See, I saw your name on your keyring there, and I looked but I just couldn’t find you in our system. So then I saw the New Orleans University gym tag, and I called them. And they wouldn’t tell me anything, and I said, oh but I have her keys! See I have her name and her ID number — I bet she’s even a doctor now, isn’t that right? Or a nurse or something? And they said yes… and they finally gave me your phone number. I had to convince them, though, they didn’t want to give it to me.”
Yes, that’s right. This amazing, sweet woman who works in public safety at the hospital administration building not only found my keys, but when she couldn’t find me in her system, made a long distance phone call to coax my phone number out of my former university, based on the keyring favor I had made for my wedding party and the tag to the university gym.
I am flabbergasted, to say the least. Amazed that she cared so much and was willing to go to such lengths for someone she’d never even met. It’s touching, and it makes me feel good to know that people like her still exist in this world.
How’s that for a warm fuzzy?
I went to boarding school in the age before email, or at least before it became common and easy. My mother the writer sent me actual letters, which I received in an actual mailbox, and I would read these actual pieces of paper over lunch. (Actual lunch? It was boarding school food, that’s debatable.) Some were short notes, some were newspaper clippings, sometimes comics she found funny. She still does this, by the way; the quantity of actual, physical, handwritten mail that arrives at my house regularly astounds my friends. That, however, is a subject for another time.
One such letter contained a copy of the following poem. On the back, my mother wrote about how much it reminded her of me, that I was so often motivated to “eat the last meal in my old neighborhood.” That clipping was posted on my wall through college and beyond, and I still have it. I think it’s in a box somewhere. (That’s a joke, in case you missed it. Sigh.) I wonder if she knew, writing on that scrap of paper, how prescient her words were.
Re-read the instructions on your palm. Find how the lifeline, broken, keeps its direction. Have faith, and move forward.
Shooting Script
Adrienne Rich
Whatever it was, the image that stopped you, the one on which you
came to grief, projecting it over & over on empty walls.
Now to give up the temptations of the projector; to see instead the
web of cracks filtering across the plaster.
To read there the map of the future, the roads radiating from the
initial split, the filaments thrown out from that impasse.
To reread the instructions on your palm; to find there how the
lifeline, broken, keeps its direction.
To read the etched rays of the bullet-hole left years ago in the
glass; to know in every distortion of the light what fracture is.
To put the prism in your pocket, the thin glass lens, the map
of the inner city, the little book with gridded pages.
To pull yourself up by your own roots; to eat the last meal in
your old neighborhood.
Last night as I fell asleep, I had an image of our house.
We stayed at a friend’s house last night, and the couch was much more comfortable than the slightly leaky twin sized air mattress that my husband and I are sharing at the moment. It was late, since we had stayed up talking until far too early in the morning, and after the last week of moving my exhaustion was rapidly overtaking me as the lights went out.
In my half-awake state, I saw the house we’ve lived in for the last year, our awkwardly shaped, sideways shotgun house in New Orleans. My mind drifted through the rooms we’ve grown to love — our bright and airy bedroom, the strange loft space we had only just gotten the hang of using to its full potential, the kitchen built for an NBA player. The furniture faded to nothing, and I saw the house empty, and it hit me that I will not be returning there. My bed is not waiting for me to return to it, my desk is on a truck somewhere, and the kitchen is no longer taunting me with cabinets well out of my reach.
We don’t live there anymore, in those empty rooms.
As I write this, I sit in a different, equally empty room. The truck with all of our furniture is supposedly going to arrive sometime at the end of the week, maybe, if all goes well, but it’s not definite yet. The uncertainty is not helping my state of mind, I have to tell you. Our new house is a funny little cottage, perfectly sized for two people. We have grand plans for decorating and furnishing this place. It will be our home. Eventually.
Right now, though, all I have are a whole lot of empty rooms.
Contents:
1 Kiddush Cup, Tree of Life design
1 Menorah
1 Box of leftover Hanukkah candles
1 The Modern Jewish Mom’s Guide to Shabbat
1 Yahrzeit candle
1 Wedding/Shabbat shawl, aka future Baptismal blanket (God willing)
1 Wall Cross, Tree of Life design
1 Set of Islamic Prayer Beads sent to my grandfather in his last hours
Any questions?
As I pack up my bookshelves, I am struck by how seemingly random the collection of titles is. Sharing Success–Owning Failure: Preparing to Command in the Twenty-First Century Air Force and Setup: What the Air Force Did in Vietnam and Why are nestled in next to The Best Liberal Quotes Ever.
I have three different translations of the Bible, four different copies of the Book of Common Prayer, a 1982 Hymnal and a combination of the hymnal and prayerbook. These all are kept together with the 365 Tao, book of the I-Ching, and all of the various books on Jewish life and religious practice that we’ve accumulated over the last four years.
My USMLE Study guides and medical textbooks are right next to Herbal Healing for Women, a book on midwifery, and my collection of People’s Pharmacy volumes.
Then of course we run into what is left of my medieval studies library, significantly decreased from the huge stack I left college with. I’ve kept my favorites of the secondary source materials, mostly having to do with women, family structure, and pilgrimage, and most of the primary sources. My best art book, the treasure my parents tracked down for me as a Christmas present, has already found its way onto my sister’s bookshelf, where I can only assume it will get more use than where it sat collecting dust in my house.
The truth is that none of these books are contradictory in the slightest, although at first glance some of them certainly seem to be. They are a direct reflection of who I am and what my journey has been. I am often amused at the reaction people have when they learn something new about me that doesn’t fit with what they have previously determined — they find out I am in the military after hearing me talk about politics, or I say something startling about alternative medicine when they know I have allopathic medical training. I break people sometimes, and they don’t know quite how to handle it.
Much like my books, I don’t fit neatly into a single box or categorization. I don’t think most people do, but I think all of us have a tendency to forget that. I want to try and remember not to make assumptions as we meet our new colleagues in the coming weeks; among other things, I don’t want to close doors before I even bother to realize they are there. I mean, why assume that the straight-laced future cardiologist doesn’t think Harry Potter rocks? Maybe she has a closet full of wizard’s robes and is just waiting for someone to give her the chance to be more than one-dimensional.
Or, perhaps she procrastinates from packing her house by waxing philosophical about what her library says about her. You know, hypothetically.
