CHAPTER 12
The third year of medical school—known as the Major Clinical Year
—is when you stop studying medicine and start living it. We weren’t
quite doctors, but we were more than just students, wearing our short
white coats and rotating through eight specialties in four-to-twelve-week
blocks.
My first rotation was Internal Medicine—a twelve-week marathon.
Each morning I’d pre-round before dawn, skimming charts and
memorizing vitals before our team descended into each patient’s room. I
interpreted EKGs, managed hyponatremia, and polished my progress
notes until they sounded like I knew what I was doing. The pace was
relentless, the expectations high, and mistakes were exposed in front of
everyone.
One morning, I misread a potassium level and presented it as normal.
My attending snapped, “So you’re saying 2.8 is fine? Maybe you’d
like to send her into cardiac arrhythmia?”
My face burned. The memory of that slipped scalpel during my first
week of medical school flashed through my mind—and how Mick had
made me feel better about it. I shoved the thought down.
I told Lesli about the incident over omelets. Our rotations had no
overlap, so we only saw each other for quick meals on the weekends.
“Minor mistake,” she said. “Don’t sweat it.”
“I know, but I feel like they’re keeping track of everything.”
“Um. Because they are,” she said with a laugh.
I smiled, then confessed my pang over Mick. How much I still
missed him.
“They say it takes one month per year of a relationship.”
“So…six months?” I groaned.
“Yes, but do you know what else they say?” She smirked at me over
her coffee. “The best way to get over someone is to get under someone
else!”
I laughed. “As if I have time for any of that.”
—
My next rotation was Emergency Medicine. It felt like being thrown into
a raging river without a life jacket. The ER was fluorescent and loud,
carrying the tang of bleach and blood. Patients came in bleeding, seizing,
gasping for air, and you had to think fast, move faster. I got vomited on,
sewed up lacerations, and assisted in resuscitations. I loved the energy,
but there was no continuity of care or closure—just stabilize, chart, move
on.
Surgery was intense in a different way. Adrenaline surged with every
incision, yet there was a strange, almost eerie calm in the focus it
demanded. I loved the teamwork and the satisfaction of seeing a case
through, from start to finish. But I missed the patient interaction. It felt
impersonal, like treating bodies without lives attached.
Pediatrics came next. It was what I’d often imagined myself doing,
but I wasn’t prepared for how fragile children looked in hospital beds—
or how easily their parents’ grief could flatten me. One day, a six-yearold boy
with leukemia asked me if he was going to die. I froze, and my
attending answered for me: “We’re going to do everything we can to help
your body fight the cancer. And we’ll be with you every step of the way.”
Afterward, I slipped into a bathroom stall and cried. Then I rinsed my
face, scrubbed my hands, and returned to the floor. The work was noble
beyond words, but I couldn’t imagine a lifetime of watching children
suffer.
Family Medicine felt familiar, even comforting, with the smell of
burnt coffee and the sound of nurses laughing together, like they’d been a
family for years. One afternoon, an elderly woman came in for her blood
pressure check, bringing a tin of homemade biscotti for the receptionists.
“Just a little thank-you for your kindness,” she said. “You all are the best
part of my week.” The specialty felt like the essence of care—warm,
personal, and grounding—but I knew I needed a different kind of
intensity and intellectual challenge.
Psychiatry and Neurology were fascinating. I loved the patient
interaction and the complexity of the cases, but I felt frustrated by how
vague both specialties could be—like groping in the dark while patients
limped along in pain.
My final block was Ob-Gyn. At that point, it had been Lesli’s
favorite, and within days, I understood why. Childbirth was pure theater:
a baby crowning, then emerging into the world, red-faced and wailing; a
father cutting the umbilical cord before gently kissing his wife’s
forehead; a mother cradling her child in that first tender skin-to-skin
moment.
Of course, there were heartbreaking moments, too. One night, I was
called to triage for a woman in excruciating pain at twenty-three weeks.
Her cervix had dilated, her amniotic sac was bulging. Nothing we did
could stop her labor. I stayed by her side, holding her hand as she
delivered a one-pound micro-preemie. The baby’s skin was translucent,
almost paper thin, his little limbs curled tight. A team of NICU nurses
and doctors swarmed around him, their hands delicate but sure, moving
with practiced urgency, checking his heart rate, placing a tiny mask over
his face, sliding a minuscule tube for oxygen. His chest rose and fell in
shallow, uneven gasps. The incubator doors closed with a soft click
before the team whisked him out of the room. I squeezed the mother’s
hand. The baby didn’t survive the hour.
Even amid the chaos of labor and delivery, I was drawn to the
intimacy—the way women let you into their lives and delivered their
truth in small, careful sentences.
On the last day of my rotation, an eighteen-year-old girl came in for
an abortion consult. She was alone, clinging to her purse, staring up at
the attending as he ran through her options in a tone that felt too brisk for
the moment.
When he left the room, I stayed, holding her hand. She looked up at
me, eyes wide, and said, “What do you think I should do?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, shaking my head. “Have you talked to
anyone? Your parents?”
She shook her head, explaining she was a freshman at NYU, far from
her home in Montana. “They’d be devastated if they knew. They’ve
sacrificed so much for me to be here.”
“They might be more devastated to know you didn’t tell them.”
She nodded, then said, “I’m so scared.”
“It’s going to be okay. Whatever you decide.”
She nodded, her shoulders dropping just a little. “Thank you for
staying with me.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, realizing that sometimes presence mattered
as much as medical treatment.
In that quiet moment, I knew I’d found my place.
