Always, Lily

▫️One

LILITH

I was tired.

My back hurt from standing for countless hours, my neck had grown stiff and my legs threatened to bail on me but I had to keep moving.

I took the blue hospital gloves off my hands and dumped them into a bin nearby before washing my hands in the sink.

I had just walked out of my third surgery, each lasting over three hours and the workload today had been so much that there was barely any break in between.

I had been awake for fifteen hours now and from the way my eyes were beginning to blink repeatedly, I knew sleep was catching up with me.

I washed the drowsiness away, splashing cold water onto my face so that I'd be more alert because there were still many other patients waiting to be tended to.

Having been in the ER all day, I hadn't gotten time to check on my regular admitted patients though I had a nurse check on their conditions this morning.

I loved my work here as a pediatrician and having worked in this field for three years now, I could say being a doctor was tough.

Honestly were it not for this being my passion, I would have quit long ago.

There were days when you never slept, others when you got devastated, others when you didn't even know what to feel but in the midst of that all, you still remained to be the doctor, the patient's hope.

It had been quite a burden for me during my earlier years when a patient's family would look at me with so much hope in their eyes even when the situation wasn't looking so good.

It tore my heart so bad, to see a child so young in a painful situation, battling against a rare disease so as to survive.

I remember crying almost every week during my first year, the pressure being so much for me to endure.

It was also along that time when I got to meet my best friend, Oliver. He had tremendously helped me grow out of that phase and were it not for him, I don't think I'd have come this far.

Oliver and I had gone to the same medical school though at that time, we hardly knew each other. I only knew him as a classmate then.

Then after completing our studies, we somehow got placed in the same hospital and it was from there our friendship grew.

He was the only friend I had, not that I was antisocial but he was the only genuine friend I had. He knew me just as much as I knew him.

Most of the people around me remained to be acquaintances and that made me appear quite reserved to the public.

It was really a great way to keep trouble away from you and I was glad from the barely there attention I received from others.

Walking into the female locker rooms, I changed out of my surgery attire into my regular clothing and then put on a white lab coat over.

I then went to the hospital cafeteria to grab a quick coffee that would keep me active for the next few hours.

Later on I went through my patient's files as I analyzed each one of them, checking how they were progressing and how slow or fast it was being.

I was almost done with the files when my phone rang and I had to stand up from my seat to check where it was ringing from.

My office wasn't a pleasant sight to see at the moment, files lay all over and there were some bit of cake crumbs on the sofa where I had comforted a crying child.