Mending Broken Hearts

5. Few Seconds

Omar

My month on outpatient service went ok. It reinforced what I already knew about myself, I did not have the aptitude to see 40 patients a day in clinic, then go home and finish clinic notes. I did realize, though, how important preventive care was. Its no joke when doctors keep beating the drum about getting that mammogram done to look for breast cancer in women, or annual checkups to make sure there are no signs of prostate cancer or colon cancer in men.

That said, my current ICU rotation was where I truly felt at home. This was my domain, my comfort zone where the itch to use my hands to save people's lives was satisfied. In the last couple of weeks I had done everything from emergent intubations on dying patients, to doing bedside drainage of lung fluid and placing people of the heart-and-lung-bypass machines.

And all that wasn't even the best part of it.

A certain resident was.

"Hey Omar." Jake whispered stealthily to me as we both sat in the resident's room putting in our patients' orders after morning rounds.

"What?" I looked at my harried co-intern, instantly feeling sorry for him.

"Let me work with Madi, for just one week, please."

"No can do man. Madi is mine."

"Madi is yours?" Jake replied with a smirk on his face.

I sat up immediately, "Oh shut up. You know what I mean"

Of course, I knew that he knew what I meant, but for some reason I could still feel my face heat up. I quickly looked around the room to make sure she wasn't there, or that no one had over heard our conversation. I had nothing but respect for my senior resident. And would hate for that to be misconstrued into something that would embarrass her.

Was I absolutely mesmerized by her, and looked like a puppy following her around? Probably.

But she was the undisputed queen of ICU.

Others could probably match her intellect, however, it was her soft skills that put her poles apart from everyone else. Her kindness and bedside manners impressed the staff and patients alike. Her competence let everyone blindly trust her. She knew everything about every disease and every patient, yet her humbleness meant that she never took credit for a job well done.

In short, I was one lucky intern.

The door to our work room opened and in came the three senior residents that lead the three teams covering our large ICU.

Liam headed towards Jake and yelled at him, making the poor guy stumble out of the room.

Kylie headed towards the corner desktop, ignoring the intern who worked with her.

Madi smiled at me and said, "Great job on rounds today, Omar," then handed me an article on causes of excessive bleeding. "Let's discuss this in the afternoon sometime"

"Sure thing," I grinned back at her.

Yeah, Madi is mine. Sorry Jake.

*******

I was surely living the dream, but being on call every third night was catching up. I had been too exhausted to cook, and had been living off frozen dinners and energy bars. Neither of which I had with me right now as my stomach growled.

The cupboard where snacks for patients were kept had been calling out to me all morning. Around noon I finally gave in and was rummaging through it when I heard Madi's voice behind me.