Day 3

Make sure to bring the med student with you when you pay for lunch. No more instant oatmeal or instant noodles on your watch today.

Set up the simulation machine that was never made to teach anyone anything, just meant to sell equipment to caffeinated and bored doctors between breaks at a national conference. Remember what they tell you back home, that anyone can teach a monkey IR. Struggle with the sim machine and feel offended for the monkey's sake.

Make a mistake at board review and learn from your own mistake out loud. You can't shake the feeling though. There are mistakes you learn from and mistakes you don't. There is a version of you in the future whose mistakes no one will catch. Be haunted by that thought as you tighten the bone window of a so-far negative CT scan. There seems to be no such thing as a negative CT scan here, no matter how much you hope and pray.

Take the van on time today. Push around the couches and tables when you get back. Fill a pot with water and use it as a weight to do squats and lunges. Burpees on the floor until you sweat. Shower before dinner. Bug spray but you can quit the sunscreen now as the sun dips in the sky. Sweat anyway. 

Wait for a cab by the gate. Watch the dogs come to say hello. One of them proudly drags a bag scavenged from the trash with something in it that still smells like food. The other is a puppy with one ear up and one ear down. Be more afraid of them than they are of you until you see the little one sneeze so hard it accidentally rolls over and bowls into her clearly annoyed mother.

Order the cheapest steak you've had in a long time and eat it all. Realize you've eaten as much as the emergency medicine doc sitting down the table who is twice your size. Order breadfruit fries because you've never had it before and eat some more. Make sure the med student eats. He was a plumber in another life, did you know. And aren't all of us plumbers really?

Beg for a mosquito coil from the guard man at the gate. Makeshift an aluminum ash tray. Burn it by your bed. Try not to think of the smoke filling your lungs as you fall asleep. Bargain instead with your future self, trading this for at least five meals with processed meat, three bummed cigarettes on a night out, and a day at the beach without sunscreen.