The Intern Blues(147)

“You don’t remember saying those thing?” I asked, surprised.

“I never said them!” he answered. “How could I remember saying them if I never said them?”

“You don’t remember your internship very well, do you Mark?”

“I remember it fine,” he replied. “I agree that things were rough for most of the year. But no matter how bad things got, I always showed respect for my patients. I’m sure of that.”

“Mark, I hate to burst your bubble, but not only did you say those things, I’ve got you saying them on tape. Would you like me to play them back to you?”

“You can’t have them on tape, because I never said them,” he reiterated, more angry this time. “If you have someone saying that stuff on tape, then it must have been one of the other interns, because it couldn’t have possibly been me.”

We argued on like that for a while. Finally, I agreed to let Mark “fix” at least some of what he believed was wrong with his portion of the book. I used his edited transcript to revise the final manuscript, but he still wasn’t happy with the finished product. In the final eighteen months of his training, that unhappiness colored our relationship. So I was less than sure that Mark would react positively to my voice on the phone.

I called his office at about eleven o’clock on a Monday morning in late January, and when he picked up the phone, I was afraid my worst fears would be realized. “I can’t talk now,” he said bluntly when I told him who it was and why I was calling. “It’s crazy here. Can I call you back sometime after our office closes?” I gave Mark my home number, never expecting to hear from him again.

But I was wrong; he called me that night. “Sorry about not being able to talk with you earlier in the day, but it’s been really nuts,” he explained, sounding neither angry nor put-out. “It’s flu season here in beautiful New Jersey, and it appears as if everyone with a pulse and a respiratory rate is sick. I was on call this weekend, and I saw seventy patients on Saturday and fifty more on Sunday. A hundred and twenty patients in one weekend! By myself! Can you believe that? It’s a new office record. In recognition, I’m planning on having the shoes I was wearing bronzed so we can display them in our practice’s trophy case. So, sorry I blew you off this morning, but I think it’ll work out better this way.”

“I thought you were still pissed off about the way you were portrayed in the book,” I said.

“Was I pissed off about that?” he asked. “I don’t remember. I really don’t remember much about my residency. Except that I hated it as much as anybody can hate anything, and that I’d never want to do it again. Outside of that, I don’t remember the people, the places, the patients, or much of anything else.”

“You don’t remember making me rewrite your sections?” I asked.

“The only thing I remember about it is I was afraid people would recognize me and give me a hard time. Remember, I had to go out and look for a job. I thought people in practice were all going to know I was Mark Greenberg in The Intern Blues, and who would want to hire someone who talked about patients the way that guy did? As it turned out, it wasn’t an issue; I don’t think anyone had even heard of the book. Looking back, I might have been a little crazy at the time.”

I silently agreed. “So what have you been doing since the late eighties?” I asked.

“Well, as soon as I finished residency, I started working at this practice,” he replied. “I joined in July of 1988, and I’ve been working here ever since. I’ve been here for nearly thirteen years, I’ve been a partner for ten, and I only have eleven more years until I retire.”

“Until you retire?” I repeated. “You’ve thought about when you’re going to retire?”

“Sure I know when I’m going to retire. I plan everything. When I started here, I told them I was going to work until I turned 55. The group was fine with that; they all agree with it.”

“Why 55?” I asked.

“You’ve obviously never been in practice,” he replied. “You can’t do this kind of work forever. Did you hear what I said before? I saw one hundred and twenty patients over the weekend. One hundred and twenty! By myself! And that doesn’t count doing rounds at the hospital and speaking on the phone to the mother of every one of our patients who didn’t come into the office. You can’t do all that—the hospital, the office visits, the phone calls night and day—when you’re 60 years old. Pediatric practice is for young people. And so I’m going to stop when I turn 55.”