During those years though, there was not all that much time to think about family.
Apart from the occasional day off, we were immersed in our jobs.
I liked it: even more than University. During University, yes: I liked to study. I did it for my dream, to make it come true.
And now, it had come true.
I -almost- had the job of my dreams. It was still and internship... but yes.
I was around people every day, talking to them, trying to solve their problems.
I had thought I was gonna love my job, at Uni; I hadn't realized just how much.
It made me feel so... in my right place. Like, as if I was supposed to be there.
Everything in my life made me feel like that: Theo, and our home, and my job.
Sometimes I stopped and thought, if I could go back, and tell 18-year-old me how far I would go in life.... how many beautiful things I would have.
She would never believe me.
....
During internship, I eventually had to rotate into Paediatric Oncology again.
It gave me chills.
I tried to be more rational, this time.
I was a doctor, now. I needed to get a grip over myself.
And I failed... again.
I spent my nights crying.
I had met one young lady, about to turn 18.
Eva.
She was wearing a blue wig- like my aunt used to do.
It was a bone cancer, she had.
And Eva was really full of life.
She took a liking in me, and we became friends.
Not very professional of me.
But I never was: a cold, and detached professional.
Whether it was right or wrong: I was a human being, first. And so were my patients.
So, Eva and I chatted a lot.
She told me about her many boyfriends; and God, that teen-aged girl on crutches, undergoing chemo, was having far more adventures than I ever did.
We giggled in the grey corridors of the hospital, and I like to think that I made her days a little more bearable.
Eva's cancer was not responding to chemo: once, she told me that she wanted to give up.
I begged her not to.
She had her whole life ahead of her: she ought to try.
She gritted her teeth, and tried again. Chemo was devastating.
And it didn't work.
Eventually, she was sent into another big Centre to try an experimental therapy with some modified T cells.
She passed away before it even had a chance to work.
She had just turned 18.
...
Another bright little girl I met, was named Sureen.
She had a brainstem cancer.
Almost incurable.
Her parents wanted to try, anyway.
So, they tried.
She was put on high-dose steroids, first.
She swelled up like puff pastry in the oven.
She started losing her hair, and having angry red stretch-marks on her sides.
She confessed me her worry that she'd never go back to normal.
One day, I showed her the stretch-marks I had on my own hips, after my anaemia and yo yo weight loss/weight gain period.
She was very happy to know that her favourite doctor had them as well.
We were not so straight-forward with her, like, for instance, with Eva.
Because she was so young.
The idea was to always try and be as honest as possible with the kids, because they would feel betrayed otherwise. But when it was a terminal illness and they were so young, it was actually very hard.
Sureen passed away, I don't remember, but less than a year after that conversation.
...
Why am I telling their stories specifically, I don't know: they're just, I think, two examples between many.
There were so many, so many stories.
So many lives, intertwining through the cold, grey corridors of that hospital.
But it wasn't just a grey hospital, for me.
It was teeming with life.
It was the symbol of hope, for so many.
So many people that just hoped to go home, one day: and our job was to do our best, to send them back.
Or at least, to make the days they had left, as happy and pain-free as possible.
More than our job: our mission.
YOU ARE READING
Let's hope for the best
Non-Fiction... but prepare for the worst. When I was a kid, I thought that life was going to be like a Disney movie. Then, alas, life happened. And I found out, I was not ready for it.
