The Internship · Second Shift · Pulse Beat
It was the hardest year of all, and she loved it. Thirty-six-hour shifts. Wards of sixty beds. A casualty department on a Saturday night, a river of the broken and the drunk. She was a doctor now, a…
It was the hardest year of all, and she loved it.
Thirty-six-hour shifts. Wards of sixty beds. A casualty department on a Saturday night, a river of the broken and the drunk. She was a doctor now, a real one, with a coat and a name tag, and she was tired in a way she had not known tiredness could be, a deep, bone-bright fatigue that made everything sharp.
On the second week of the internship she was on night duty, alone in the medical ward. At two in the morning, a young man was brought in, unconscious, in diabetic ketoacidosis. She had seen it twice in her life. She started the fluids and the insulin, drew the gas, wrote the orders, and sat beside him, watching the numbers, for six hours. By dawn his eyes were open.
The registrar came on at seven and read the chart. "Who managed this?"
"I did," said Fatima.
He looked up. "It's perfect." He blinked. "Where did you learn it?"
"I worked nights for six years," said Fatima. "You pick things up."