Chapter Two
The following day, Myles is the first roommate to arrive. He looks just like his online profile from the residency lodging finder. Short stature. Thinning brown hair. Wire-rimmed glasses. Doctorish-level smart. He rolls in two large suitcases, and a backpack hangs low on him.
“You must be Luna.” He slings the pack off of him, and it hits the wood floors with a thump.
He puts his hand out to shake mine, but instead, I wrap my arms around his shoulders. He, our other roommate Raven, and I have been speaking for three months after finding each other on the resident finder. It feels like we’ve known each other for ages.
“Myles.” I release him and grab one of the rolling bags to show him the remaining bedroom options. “It’s so great to finally meet you in person.”
He chooses the first room and looks around the place. “My moving truck should arrive by tonight. At least I hope it does, or I’ll be sleeping on the floor.” He pushes his glasses up his nose.
“What’s up, roomies?” A loud voice bellows out, and Myles and I both go to see who it is. Raven stands with an older gentleman and runs to hug me first, and then Myles. “We are not in Charleston anymore.” She looks at the man with her. “This is my dad, Curtis. Dad, this is Luna. She’s from Minnesota. And Myles, from Texas.”
Raven is exactly like I imagined she would be—larger than life. She’s about my height and wears her long hair in braids, which are currently tied on top of her head.
“It’s nice to meet you both.” Raven’s father stands at the door. “I’m going to grab a few things from the truck.”
“I didn’t bring anything from home except my clothes,” Raven says when her dad walks out. “I ordered a bed and some furniture from the city, which will be delivered later. It seemed so much easier that way.”
Presbyterian has an impressive resident lodging database. You look through people’s profiles and hit the match button if you want to consider them as a roommate. On paper, the three of us are compatible, and I hope that translates to how we actually live together. We’ll rarely be in the apartment at all anyway.
“We’ll just walk to the hospital, right?” Raven says as she lays on her stomach on the living room floor several hours later, an almost empty pizza box in front of her.
Myles pulls out his phone and starts studying a map. “It looks like we’re only about six blocks away, so yeah.”
“Even in the winter?” Raven says. “I’ll need to buy myself a coat because this girl doesn’t have one.”
“Are we going to be able to sleep tonight?” I reach to the floor and grab another slice of pizza. My stomach has been tied in knots all day thinking about tomorrow, yet the food is going down nicely.
Raven sits up and shakes her head. “I’ve been having a recurring nightmare ever since my white coat ceremony where I forget everything I’ve learned the last four years. I mean everything.”
Myles removes his glasses and blows on them. “My nightmare is that I show up on day one, and my name isn’t on the list of expected residents, and it turns out, I didn’t get in.”
I stand up. “I just need tomorrow to come and go so I can start sleeping again. The anxiety is going to be the death of me. In one scenario, I show up to the hospital naked. In another, I end up having to treat a patient without supervision, and I miss all the signs of a heart attack and my patient dies.”
Raven tilts her head back and sighs loudly. “My hands can’t unpack another box, so that will have to wait until another day.” She stands and brings the now empty pizza box to the kitchen.
“I’m going to give my girlfriend a call, and then I’m going to hit the hay too,” Myles says.
I look around the apartment, and boxes are stacked against the walls. When three people take their lives and combine it into a thousand square feet, it’s probably going to take a while before we feel settled.
“Here goes the rest of our lives,” I say, stretching my arms and yawning.
I head to my bedroom where the majority of my clothes still lie in a pile on the floor. I think about working through the mounds of it and finding my box of hangers, but instead, I get into bed, pop a melatonin gummy in my mouth, and stare at the squares on the ceiling above me.
*****
Myles, Raven, and I were so nervous about being late, that we got to the hospital almost an hour early. We’re shown to the changing rooms, and I put on a pair of scrubs and leave my street clothes in the locker. I pull on my white coat and glance at myself in the full-length mirror. My brown hair starts to curl from the humidity, so I tie it on top of my head.
All eight of the new general surgery residents file out of the changing room and meet in a conference room to get our first assignments. For the next four or more years, these will be our people. A doctor approaches us and lays a few stethoscopes and pagers on the desk, even though most of us already have one around our necks. The doctor is a tall man, not much older than me, and probably a fourth or fifth-year resident.
“Good morning, fellow doctors.” He looks at us spread out over three small, round tables. “I am Dr. Parse. Your Chief Resident. Welcome to year one. I have your rotation assignments. There are no good or bad rotations. You’ll all have an opportunity to see all the different surgical areas of the hospital.”
“Rotations will be two to six weeks long,” Dr. Parse continues. “It will include general surgery, surgical oncology, trauma surgery, vascular surgery, cardiothoracic, and care of the burned patient.”
He puts papers on the tables, and I wait until one gets passed my way. I see my name immediately. Dr. Luna Oliver. Trauma surgery. Emergency room. Myles and Raven have the same first rotation.
Dr. Parse quiets us. “Your stethoscope should be an extension of your body. There is no reason to go anywhere without it. The same goes for your pager. When you are on call, you must be reachable at all hours of the day and night.”
Dr. Parse leans against the back wall of the conference room. “I’ll start with the trauma surgery rotation, and today is all about airway management, charting, and sutures. You will not practice medicine unless you are under the direction of me or one of the attending physicians.”
Raven elbows me in the arm and raises her eyebrow. I glance to my left and then right, and all the residents take in every word. She leans closer and whispers into my ear. “Shit just got real.”
Dr. Parse continues by paraphrasing the Hippocratic oath. He tells us to imagine the patients are our loved ones and treat everyone we see how we’d want our favorite people to be treated.
“My group, let’s go.” Dr. Parse opens the door to the conference room, and those assigned to him start following. “We’re going to start our day doing rounds.” He takes the chart and hands it to me. I look through the papers and then hand them to Raven.
We enter an exam room, and me and my fellow residents stay in the background. A nurse has already started an IV. Dr. Parse glances at us. “Fifty-one-year-old female. Loss of appetite. Vomiting. Sudden pain on the right side of the abdomen. Flushed face. High temperature. Any ideas?”
“It sounds like an appendicitis.” Myles steps forward confidently like he belongs, and Dr. Parse nods.
“Here are the labs.” Another nurse walks in and hands Dr. Parse the paperwork.
“The white counts are elevated.” He studies the paper and then turns to me. “What should we do next?”
I look around, aware of everyone’s stares. I try to push my self-doubt far down. “We could do a urine test to rule out a urinary tract infection or kidney stones. Or we could bring her right to imaging and get an abdominal x-ray.”
Dr. Parse turns to the nurse. “Let’s get our patient to imaging.”
My first patient as a resident was a softball throw, but I know cases will get more complicated. I’m able to scrub in for the appendectomy, and after that, we move on to more rounds.
The day flies by. We follow Dr. Parse around and see a multitude of things, from broken bones to a heart attack, to a staple gun mishap. As we walk to the next exam room, Dr. Parse looks at me.
“You’re Dr. Oliver?”
“Yes.” It takes a moment for me to form the words as he hasn’t spoken directly to me yet. “Luna Oliver.”
He nods. “There’s a Dr. Oliver in Cardiology. A relative of yours?”
“My brother.”
Dr. Parse nods, and we turn down another hallway. I’m already learning we don’t walk anywhere. Instead, I practically jog to keep up.
“A family of physicians.” We turn into our next room. “I did an internal medicine residency with Forest before I decided to go the surgical route,” Dr Parse says.
Medicine isn’t actually in my family at all. Forest and I are the first. My dad is an elementary gym teacher and basketball coach, and my mom works at the school library. Forest was the first to be interested in it, and I followed shortly after. My favorite place in school was the biology lab.
Dr. Parse asks me to check in with the patient and get his symptoms.
“The patient is experiencing severe pain in his abdomen,” I say as the man holds his gut and moans as I examine him.
A younger woman holds the man’s hand and looks at me. “Dean never complains of pain. He’s been acting off for a couple of weeks, and then today, he dropped to the ground, grabbing his stomach.”
“I’d like to order an abdominal CT,” I say, and the patient once again moans.
“Do you think that’s necessary?” Dr. Parse places his hands on his hips and waits for me to respond.
The caretaker with the patient watches me, her eyes pleading with mine. “Yes, I think it’s necessary.”
Dr. Parse nods, and we call down to get Dean into CT.
We see a few more patients, and as we’re walking by the exam room Dean is in, I step in and check on him.
“How are you feeling, Dean?” I ask, and he sits up a little straighter.
“Like someone put their first into my stomach and pulled out my guts.”
“Dean, we didn’t need that visual.” The woman lets go of his hand and shakes mine. “I’m Sally. Dean’s daughter-in-law. Thank you for ordering the abdominal CT. I’d been asking for it for an hour, but apparently, none of these doctors seem to think it’s necessary.”
“Hopefully it gives us some answers.” I rub Dean’s shoulder and check his vitals.
“I turned eighty yesterday,” he says. “And this weekend, all of my grandkids are coming to the city to see me. I haven’t seen them in almost a year.”
“Take a deep breath.” When he fully exhales, I ask, “How many grandkids do you have?”
“Six.” He tries to smile but grimaces instead. “And we get together every summer. They call it Grandpa Camp.”
“Dr. Oliver. A word please.” Dr. Parse sticks his head in the room and then walks out into the hallway. I smile at Dean and Sally and walk out.
“Did the results come back yet from radiology,” I ask him, and Dr. Parse hands them to me. I study the film and know what it is immediately.
“A perforated bowel. Good thing I ordered a CT. We’ll have to get him to surgery.” I hand Dr. Parse back the results.
He hangs his head. “Dean isn’t a surgical candidate, Dr. Oliver. I pulled his medical records, and he has so many comorbidities. I just got off the phone with Gastrointestinal, who said there is no way he’d survive the surgery.”
“So, what can we do?” I grab the paperwork back from him like it will hold the answers to save our patient.
“We’ll get him admitted,” Dr. Parse says. “And make sure he’s as comfortable as possible.”
Dr. Parse asks me to speak to the family, and I return to the room. Dean and his daughter-in-law don’t see me come in, so I stand at the door and press my body against the cold wall. She holds his hands, and they say a prayer together. When they look in my direction, I step forward and tell them the hardest thing I’ve ever had to tell anyone. Something I’ll need to repeat so many times in my career.
This isn’t survivable. Who should we call? I’m so sorry. Questions come my way, but then it’s only stunned silence. I feel like an intruder watching the reality of mortality wash over both of their faces and somehow, they hold each other tighter. Tears spill out of Dean’s eyes, and in this moment, he’s not just a stranger I’m meeting for the first time. But he’s everyone I’ve ever lost. The face of anyone who’s felt pain. And I can’t help but feel it too.
There is hope in not knowing when the end will come, but also inevitably in the fact that it will arrive for all of us. A tear drips out of one eye, and I brush it away before they notice. I’m going to need thicker skin, but there is something about Dean that reminds me of my grandpa, and I can’t help but feel sad.
“Thanks for being honest with me,” he says. “I guess it’s my last call.”
I stand, the emotion so close to the surface. “Take care of each other. I’ll send a nurse to discuss pain management.”
Dean nods, and I walk out of the room.