Intern Asked Why We Stay

intern watched me deliver twins with one working monitor. asked why we don't leave. said because someone has to and i'm good at it. not heroic. arithmetic. brain drain is real. guilt is real. skill is a rope you throw backward. the call bell kept ringing two doors down while i rinsed my hands twice. charting took another forty minutes after i left the room. my co-resident asked if i wanted coffee and i realized i had not eaten since six am. the hallway smelled like disinfectant and cafeteria grease that never quite reaches the break room. i signed the note and felt the weight of every small kindness that never makes the chart. on the walk to the parking garage i replayed the conversation line by line the way you do when you are not sure you said enough. a janitor nodded hello and that ordinary moment helped more than the pep talk in the conference room last week. my phone had seventeen unread messages and i answered three. the rest could wait until i had a face that looked less like the shift.

An intern watched me deliver twins with one working monitor. Asked why we do not leave for abroad.

I said because someone has to and I am good at it. Not heroic. Arithmetic.

Brain drain is real. Guilt is real. Skill is a rope you throw backward.

Hospital systems fail in public. Competence becomes a reason to endure what should be fixed instead of celebrated.

She stayed for the next case. I count that as a win I did not ask for.

Documentation came later, under fluorescent light that makes everyone look more tired than they are. I signed the note and wondered, not for the first time, how much of medicine is learning which silences to fill and which to respect.

The work does not pause for epiphanies. Another pager, another room, another person whose fear is not in the differential but should be. I keep showing up because the alternative is a version of myself I would not like.

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