Not only are they going to do this to me, not only are they going to take me away from the best rotation in the system, but also they’re going to deprive me of working with Amy Sorenson; Amy Sorenson, who, in addition to being one of the smartest and friendliest of all the residents, also happens to be one of the best-looking. I’ve waited all year to work with her; I’ve even dreamed about it. It’s one of the only things that’s been keeping me going. And now they’re making me switch to 6A, where my resident’ll be Attila the Hun. And not only are they taking me from the best ward with the best resident and putting me on the worst ward with the worst resident, but also they weren’t even going to tell me about it until I showed up at the start of January rotation! So what this means is I’m going to wind up doing a total of five weeks on 6A and three weeks of Children’s. I’m getting screwed, and I’ll tell you one thing: Even if I don’t wind up killing the chiefs, you can bet I’ll never be caught dead doing a favor for them again!
Friday, December 13, 1985
I’m waiting for Carole to come by. We’re going out for dinner with Bob Marion and his wife, so I’ve got to make this quick. It looks like I won my battle, and I didn’t even have to use force. When I showed up for work on Wednesday ready to go up to the chief residents’ office to reenact some of the more gruesome parts of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Arlene came up to me in the hall and said, “Oh, we made a mistake. You don’t really have to work on 6A next month after all.” Apparently the chiefs talked it over and decided they really couldn’t screw me like that. That’s kind of nice, but it threw me off guard. I mean, it’s completely against their nature to be nice to interns. I have to assume they’re setting me up for something. So now my problem is, I’m sure they’re going to try to ambush me, but I’m not sure when. It would have been easier if they had forced me to do the month on 6A and I had just killed them; it would’ve taken all the guess work out of the next few weeks.
Well, the bell just rang. I guess that’s Carole.
It’s still Friday night, or maybe it started being Saturday morning already. Yeah, it’s twelve-thirty. I just got home. Carole and I had a big fight. What else is new? I’m such a wonderful conversationalist, so nice to be around. All I ever do is complain about work, and all she ever does is complain about me. Tonight she started in on me about my apartment. We went to this seafood place on City Island and she asked Bob and his wife if they knew of a place where I could move that didn’t have roaches. I don’t want to move! I like my roaches; they give me someone to talk to. So I said, “I don’t want to move!” and that started it off. She said she understood I was working hard but that she was a person, too, and if I wanted her to be part of my life, I was going to have to make some time for her in my busy schedule. I said that life is hard enough right now for me without anybody making demands on my time. Bob’s wife looked kind of uncomfortable through this, but Bob was eating it up. He wants to make this year into a book, so he was salivating with all this intimate social stuff. We fought for a while but then we made up around dessert. So now we’re friends again.
Carole’s given up on getting married, at least for right now. I don’t know what’s going to become of this, but I do know one thing: If this relationship can make it through this year, it can make it through anything.
Wednesday, December 18, 1985
Last night something really funny happened. It almost made it worthwhile being on call. Wow, what a weird thing to say. Nothing could ever make being on call worthwhile. Anyway, here’s what happened: I admitted this fifteen-year-old girl who had been found unconscious in the street. Someone called EMS [Emergency Medical Service] and they rushed her to West Bronx. It was quickly figured out that she had overdosed on a combination of crack and heroin. They worked on her for a while in the ER and got her stabilized, then decided to admit her to Adolescent. So I went down to the ER to pick her up. That’s when she woke up. Lucky me.
She wasn’t what I’d call the friendliest patient I’d ever seen. What she was was abusive. She cursed out anyone who came within ten feet of her, me, the nurses, my medical student, everybody. I couldn’t examine her, I couldn’t even get close enough to get her vital signs. So I called the senior and she came, and after she got cursed and threatened for a while, she said, “No way! I’m not touching her!” So here it was, nearly two in the morning, and we’ve got this lovely young woman in our treatment room who isn’t exactly happy to be there, and we’re supposed to do something to make her better. So the resident said, “If we can’t examine her, we have to call the person who has ultimate authority. Who’s that?”