Fallen Blossoms

Christine paused in the middle of typing her note, her thoughts suddenly turning elsewhere. What was she doing? Was this really what she wanted to do? She was in the beginning of the third year of her neurosurgery residency and the whole time, doubt plagued her; she felt like she was far behind her colleagues in skill, both in the OR and out.

The other day, she had really fucked up a case, accidently moving the instrument one millimeter too far. The patient was now trapped forever in his body, only able to move his eyes up and down and blink - locked-in syndrome. It was already haunting her, making her lose what precious sleep she could get, and who could possibly forget the sounds of her attending yelling at her reverberating through her head? Not that she could blame him. He was right. She fucked up. The guy used to be able to walk, talk, feed himself… Now, he's confined to a bed, nearly all his muscles paralyzed.. All her fault. Could she handle 4 more years of this? Probably not. She didn't think she could even handle one more day.

Maybe this field wasn't for her.

But then what? It's not like she could quit medicine. She was over $300,000 in debt. It was too late to try and even leave the field, so where did that leave her? She could either continue to struggle through the residency and be miserable or… Or maybe she could switch fields? Some of her friends had done it. One in particular jumped from general surgery to internal medicine. Maybe she could do the same.

Maybe she should do the same, if only to keep her sanity.

After all, the 8 hour surgeries were already wearing on her. The 14 hours days eating away at her soul (and that's not even including 24-30 hour call)… The stupid pages waking her at 3AM... and all the attendings, good God the attendings. Could they have a bigger God complex?

And then there was Stephen. They had been going out, if you can even call it that. She thought being with him would help, but it only made it worse. He was there, but not there for her. As predicted by the resident's betting pool, the relationship ended in flames, pushing Christine further and further from the others. Of course, they would side with the newly minted attending. Of course, Christine would be ostracized.

It was already a daily thought: maybe this car will run me over if I cross the street right now (yay passive suicidal ideation!); maybe I should jump off the roof of the hospital… The thoughts became as normal as breathing.

The drive home was terrible. Sometimes she found herself drifting toward the median without realizing it, only to jerk her car and almost hit the person next to her. Whether this was from exhaustion/inattention or a subconscious drive to end her life… it was hard to say.

The days blurred together. Rounds. Surgery. Get reprimanded. Consult. Maybe find time to eat. Maybe get a bathroom break, but definitely find time to hide in the 7th floor bathroom to have a cry after being reprimanded again. Consult. Go home. Try not to crash, but seriously consider it. Sleep. Wake up. Rinse and repeat.

Things were supposed to get better, or so she kept hearing, but it seemed like it was only getting harder. Harder to tolerate the attendings. Harder to tolerate the patients. Harder to tolerate life. She felt like she was in a maze with unseen pitfalls and cliffs. Right now, she was up against a cliff that was slowly pushing her toward a pit.

So where did that leave her?

Falling deeper into hell.

She shook her head. She needed to finish this consult and then go write the post-op note. There wasn't time to be wallowing in self-pity or whatever these emotions were. There just wasn't time for emotions. She tried to be cold and distant, like Stephen, but that just wasn't her. She couldn't not care, and frankly, she wasn't sure how Stephen did it; how he could be so good at distancing himself from patients? She had tried to follow suit and lock away the emotions, building a wall between herself and her emotions, but the wall was too flimsy and had to be remade often. If Stephen's was a concrete fortress, then Christine's was thin plywood.

She finished her note and the post-op and was immediately dismissed by the senior resident, far earlier than normal. It should have been a blessing but all she could think about on the drive home was how they wanted to get rid of her before she screwed something else up. She barely made it into her apartment before the dam broke loose and the tears started pouring down.

Fuck this. Fuck this fuck this fuckthisfuckthisfuckthis I can't I can't I can't-

...But I have to.

Christine ended up taking a week leave, citing family issues. Yea, that's right, "family issues" where the "issue" was her, but the week was a bust, yielding no new answers.

So she trudged back to the hospital against her will (she really couldn't afford any more PTO days after all), and with a new month started a new rotation - neurocritical care - and maybe a new start.

Ha, who was she kidding. If she was already in hell, neurocritical care was worse, but what she hadn't expected were the ER people.

"You ok?" the voice asked over the phone - an ER resident - during sign-out.

"What? I mean, yea. Fine. Sorry, you were saying?"

"Go take a break. Get something to eat. The patient can wait a bit. They're stable, and they're definitely not going anyway anytime soon."

Ultimately, she slowly gravitated toward the ER, finding them to be far less malignant than the neurosurgery program. She found herself spending more and more time there, a place most other doctors avoided if possible. ("ER? Please, it's the cesspool of the hospital.")

She was laughing with one of the ER residents when a fellow neurosurg resident walked by. His eyebrow raised as he saw the two together and Christine suddenly felt the need to run away. The ER resident glared at him until he walked away. "Fuck him," she growled. "You need to get out of that program. Those fucking obsessive scalpel jerks. You're too good for them."

"Maybe.." she muttered.

"No, seriously. Come do ER instead!"

It hadn't taken much convincing after that. In fact, that day, she met with both program directors, and it wasn't long until it was a done deal. After the switch, things in her life started to get back together, the fellow ER residents more supportive than the neurosurg people ever were. Working in the ER, she started to remember why she went into medicine; why she had even started on this long arduous journey.

She didn't regret flipping. How could she? But the only thing that ever made her look back on her neurosurgery life was Stephen.

I swear, this was only written because I was trying to figure out what kind of doctor Palmer was. My bestie suggested she had jumped fields and it kinda made sense (but not really) but yea anyway. Enjoy. Or not.

Title from Epik High - Fallen Blossoms