Chapter 12 Frankie
FRANKIE
There’s nothing I love more than striding into the hospital at five in the morning. And come the summer, I’ll get to do it every single day for three years.
Liz and I biked in together, then I head to the orthopedic surgery floor.
I recognize my new rotation attending, Dr. Patricia Chen, from a lecture she gave to my class in second year. She’s standing at the nurses’ station when I arrive, her dark hair pulled back in a severe bun, reviewing charts on a tablet.
“Are you Wilson?” she asks without looking up.
“Yes, yep. That’s me, yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me ma’am. Makes me feel ancient.” She finally glances at me, her sharp eyes assessing. “What residency programs have you applied to?”
“Emergency Medicine here, plus San Francisco, and Phoenix.”
“All good programs. Your senior resident this rotation is Dr. Hashemi. He’s a trauma surgeon with a lot of ER time, so when he gets a page, you should shadow him.”
“Thank you, I’m looking forward to that opportunity.”
“Good. FYI, I like students who can think on their feet.” She hands me the tablet.
“Familiarize yourself with the patients on our service today. Pre-round on all of them. We’re in the OR by eight.
Dr. Hashemi will expect detailed notes on each patient—overnight events, vitals, labs, physical exam findings.
He will also ask you for an assessment. Don’t just regurgitate what’s in the chart.
We want to know your thoughts and give you feedback on that. Any questions?”
“Not yet.”
“See you in an hour, then.”
I sink into the rhythm of the floor pretty quickly. Dr. Hashemi arrives with a third year medical student in tow, and then I have company as I dig into the cases in front of us.
The first patient is an elderly woman two days post-op from hip replacement who is complaining of increased pain.
“Differential diagnosis?” the senior resident asks.
“It could be normal post-surgical pain,” I say. “But we need to check that it’s not early infection.”
“Keep an eye on her blood work and keep me posted.”
I nod vigorously. “Yes, will do.”
“Next?”
This one is a middle-aged man with a complex ankle fracture who is very focused on when he can drive again. Which isn’t my place to answer just yet, not for six more months.
“Mr. Patterson in 5024,” I say, pulling up his chart on my tablet.
“Fifty-two-year-old male, post-op day three from a bimalleolar ankle fracture sustained in a skiing accident. Vitals stable overnight, afebrile. Pain is well controlled. Incision sites clean, dry, and intact with no signs of erythema or drainage.”
“Did you do a distal neurovascular exam?”
“Yes. Strong pulses, intact sensation, and good toe movement.”
Dr. Chen arrives as I finish and holds out her hand for the tablet.
Dr. Hameshi encourages us to present what we’ve observed from the post-op patients, then we move on to the surgical cases for the day.
In the OR, there are more questions. Day one of a rotation is a lot of baseline assessment. As the second surgery is wrapping up, we’re paged to the ER for a consult on a fracture that needs to be set under sedation.
Dr. Chen sends me to follow Dr. Hameshi.
“Have you observed a ketamine sedation before?” he asks as we strip off our surgical gowns.
“A few times.”
He asks me a few more questions in the time it takes us to walk to the ER, and when we get there, it turns out the patient has two fractures, a broken leg and a broken arm.
The leg is probably going to need surgery, but we attempt a reduction anyway, and then I’m tasked with casting the forearm fracture, too, before he’s wheeled off to imaging to see how we did on the leg.
While we’re done there, a trauma comes in and Dr. Hameshi is pulled in for a consult, but there are too many people in the room, so I check in with the nursing station and see if there are any other ortho cases I can poke my nose into.
“What are you doing down here?” Sloane asks, appearing out of nowhere.
I jump. “Don’t scare me like that. What are you doing down here?”
Liz and I both have in hospital rotations this month, but Sloane has a month off for a research project.
My research month is March, and Liz’s is in February.
It’s also jokingly called vacation month, because while we do need to do a culminating project, it’s also our last chance to have some time off before residency.
And my bestie is just like me, so of course she’s spending her first day of that month off at the hospital. I shouldn’t have even asked.
“Having lunch with my dad,” she says.
I’m very good at ignoring the little pulse of sadness that happens every time Sloane mentions her dad, which is…often. Her father is an attending, a trauma surgeon who is on the faculty of the medical school, too.
And he bought her a cute little house in Culver City so she’s not far from campus but also has some freedom from where her parents live in Beverly Hills.
A cute little house Liz and I get to live in at below market rental rates.
Sloane’s parents are genuinely amazing people.
I’m not jealous at all.
Not even a little bit. I’m more mature than that. I’m so, so mature—
“Wilson!”
I whirl away and wave at Dr. Hameshi.
“Gotta go, have a good lunch,” I toss back at Sloane over my shoulder.
And maybe I’m still thinking about that little interaction, and how I’m not at all jealous, at the end of the day when Dr. Chen seeks me out and asks me how my day was.
Because I don’t need my parents to support my career. I have no end of options for strong mentors in my own field.
“It was really interesting,” I say earnestly. “I learned a lot from Dr. Hameshi and it was a privilege to observe you in the OR.”
“Rounds again tomorrow,” she says. “Then we have a clinic day. Different pace.”
“I’m up for it. I’m up for anything,” I promise.
She smiles. “You’ll do just fine on this rotation, Wilson. You’re a smart girl. I like that a lot.”
And belatedly, I realize the dull ache in my chest isn’t about wishing my parents would say things like that, although that’s always a small burr.
This regret is fresher.
The last person to make me feel capable and seen was…Logan.
Ah crap.
I try to mentally slam that door shut.
I don’t want to think about how the booze made him super interested in me, or how that endless fascination spiralled effortlessly to physical worship.
One of these days I’m going to put the New Year’s Eve memory in a box and lock it away forever. Today is apparently not that day. Not yet.
“Thank you, Dr. Chen,” I manage.
I’m going to have to find a way to double, triple down on work this week. Because working as part of a team to heal people is my life, my future.
And it has absolutely no room in it for the memory of a hockey player with an easy going smile, of secret wedding vows that were fuelled by a lot of champagne bubbles and birthday wishes that got out of hand.