An Anthology By A Mortal

Resident

The hospital will always be there for you.

Not in that it'll support you, because it won't.

Not in that it cares about your job, because it doesn't.

Not in that it'll give you time off when you need it, because those are the days it'll keep you the longest.

The hospital will always be there for you because the hospital will demand so much of you there won't be anything left. Malnourished relationships will wither and die, choked from the supply of time, attention, and fucks to give you no longer have. Casual acquaintances won't become friends but will become less than because they are less than. They live lives with less intensity, smaller stakes— people don't die if they let their standards down. How could they understand, relate to the overwhelming tsunami of ambition that has engulfed every interaction you've had for the past 20 years?

The hospital will always be there for you because one day you'll be sitting alone by an empty Christmas tree, watching fireworks alone in your living room on the 4th of July, and the rosettes of warmth and friendship will be uncomfortably hot for you, the cool-headed surgeon. They'll wink at you from the sky, taunting you for not having anyone to watch them with. In your living room, you are nothing, nobody, a social failure, but in the hospital you are.

And so you'll go back, unwilling and unable to imagine another way to fill the void— maybe that's what the creed "cure by cutting" really means. As you grab your keys, mask both donned and in hand as you walk out, that sense of displacement dissipates and you regain your frame.

No matter what happens, the hospital will always be there for you.