Day 1

 Wake early to the sound of nothing. Spray yourself down with mosquito repellant and rub sunscreen on every exposed part. It has expired and is the consistency of cottage cheese but probably still works. The FDA has a program for re-purposing expired medications to send abroad.

Go down the stairs when the van honks outside. Keep it together on the bumpy ride and be grateful you didn't eat breakfast. Wonder about the other people in the van. Listen to someone speak Spanish for the first time.

Blue, the hospital is blue. (White, the cemetery was white. The British like white.) Take a tour of the hospital and feel relieved there is air-conditioning most places and ashamed at your own relief. Meet people in a dark room and immediately feel at home. Sink into that semi-dark whispering quiet and feel your eyes half close while the familiar caffeine buzz grips the nape of your neck. Titrate accordingly.

Tag along to a meeting with what you believe could be the medicine team. They discuss a pulmonary embolism that has been teetering on the edge of unstable over the weekend. No one wears ID tags or white coats so you have no idea who anyone could be but you get the sense there is a hierarchy here everyone else seems to know. It's like trying to sing along to a song you don't know the words to. Walk away from the meeting wondering what if anything happened and what if anything will happen to the patient now.

Try your hand at reading out as an attending. Realize how much the templates you've worked with have engrained themselves into your memory. Let show your dislike of neuro and refuse to read out any more ENT cases after a nasopharyngeal tumor makes you sweat. Stick to chest, stick to body, stick to peds. 

Promise yourself you will pay for lunch. Who knows how many people you pay for but it's cheap and filling. Eat more new fruits and vegetables here so far than you have all year. Calaloo. Jamoon. Duongs. Balanjay sounds new but it is stewed eggplant. They wrap it in roti and it spills hot over your hands as you give a lecture on gastrointestinal anatomy. Take bites that make your voice thick as you rush through how you'd treat a bleeder at home, and they tell you blood transfusions there are rare.

Watch them place drains. The room is green. There are more nurses in that room than you've seen all day. Give credit to the ingenuity of creating a sterile ultrasound probe cover using a pair of gloves, the elastic wrist cuff taking the place of a rubber band. Realize no one else in the room knows what equipment is needed to place a drain much less how to open the packaging of said equipment. Wince as multiple packages are opened unnecessarily. Realize the man on the table is not fully sedated. Watch everyone watch his vitals fluctuate and wonder what would happen if.

Dinner is at a Brazilian pizza place. They are out of Brazilian pizza by the time you order. Get a burger instead and watch out of the corner of your eye as it hisses on the open grill. Listen to the nurses who came with you talk about what it was like to grow up there. How going to the hospital then meant sure death. How far things have come that people can trust doctors now. Learn that the hospital is currently operating at 40% nursing capacity.

It begins to rain. Pouring on the tin roof and drowning out any conversation you could possibly have. Look outside and see a sheet of flickering white and realize that is what rain looks like against the street light here. Smell the petrichor--it's different here. Thicker yet cleaner like a sigh being released from the earth. Your senses lull you into a deep sleep.