My ride, I love you

Tawan

Chapter 9: Tawan

"Mrs. Ueai, Mrs. Ueai."

I tap a senior nurse who's the chief of outpatient examination subdivision while glancing at the clock. It is just past six o'clock and the regular work hours haven't even started yet, but every morning when I walk past outpatient examination subdivision, I always see her. Everyday, she patrols the area, chatting with the waiting patients. It is a familiar sight to all resident doctors in the Internal Medicine Department.

"Yes? Hi, Dr. Tawan. How may I help you?"

She turns and smiles.

"Um..." I hand her the two appointment slips.

"My friend's uncle and younger uncle have a check-up today. Could you please send them to my examination room? Early queue if that's manageable."

Mrs. Ueai adjusts the angle of her eyeglasses and looks at the slips.

"Sure, doc. No problem. They're appointed with a resident, not a house staff. I can assign them to your room." She looks up from the slips. "Your friend's uncle and younger uncle? Why don't they have the same last name?"

I furrow my brows and take them back for a better look.

Oh...damn right. Different last names.

"Maybe the uncle is his mother's older brother. I haven't noticed this either."

"I see. The appointment requires blood sample. Doctor, have you sent them for blood drawing already?"

I nod to her. "Yes. I heard they're going to get something to eat now. I'm going up to round the ward first, and will hurry down for examination by nine. I promise."

"Eh, what about morning conference? How can you make it by nine?"

Mrs. Ueai objects. By normal schedule, after rounding the ward, residents must attend a morning conference before they come downstairs to examine outpatients. And each conference (every morning) takes quite a long time.

"Oh, today I'm on morning OPD duty, so I don't have to join the conference."

I explain and then estimate in my head the ratio of the patients to the doctors and hospital personnel, especially in the morning. As the medical examination queue becomes so crowded since before sunrise, the hospital has to manage its personnel to avoid having patients wait too long for their turns.

Therefore, each morning, one or two doctors are exempted from the conference so they can start examining the patients right away. This way, the crowd in the queue gets thinned down a little before the rest of the doctors finish the conference and start doing the examination in full gear.

"Then, get some food before coming here. If your blood sugar gets too low you'll faint and become my burden. Hahaha!" She says with a laugh.

"Okayyyy, I won't make the same mistake twice."

I drawl and smile, then exit the examination subdivision. My mind darts back to the incident she just teased me about. It was my first week returning here for specialty training and I wasn't acclimated to the workload. I was slow, and finished my ward round too late to get a meal. So, I forced myself to continue examining the patients while hungry, thinking I would get to eat at noon.

But if you've been to public hospitals, especially those that are also medical schools, you might have noticed the amount of outpatients we get. With such numbers, it's impossible for a doctor to sneak away for a meal. On that day, it was almost 2 p.m., yet I hadn't finished half of the cases that were assigned to me. I kept pushing my limits and kept examining. I felt dizzy but I fought it. Then, when I got up from my chair to listen to the patient's lungs, the world spun and I blacked out.