Open Heart {Under Revision}

Chapter 13- Wandering Bones

When Dr. Ramsey gave me that form to fill, he never told it was going to be nightmare to write.

I was pretty sure not even the president wrote that much in his bio. The amount of information they asked was a lot, aimed mostly at our sanity and future goals. And it took me whole night and then some to fill it up and now I stood with Landry and Sienna—who bore equally grumpy faces since they enrolled for the competition too. We were in a queue to hand out these forms in atrium to a female attending who had set up a table along with couple of residents to officially declare our participation.

"I thought people are going to refrain from participating." I spoke in a low voice to both of my friends, "We have what, hundred and fifty residency appointments this year?"

"Yeah. And you have exactly hundred and fifty interns enrolling for this competition." Sienna grumbled, "God, my head is aching."

"Is it because of hangover or formover?"

She glared at her form, "Both! I mean who asks so much, damn it!"

"I would agree with Sienna." Landry rubbed a hand on his face, "This stuff is too much! My thesis papers would not even be half of it."

"Chief Emery specifically requested for it." I tattled, taking a squint over my shoulders to find the snake of interns ever-expanding, "Wonder why."

Sienna waved her hand, "Trust me, Dr. Ramsey is going to eliminate half of interns after that qualifying examination." Her eyes narrowed, "If our residents don't do before that."

We followed her line of vision and found Dr. Mirani meticulously chiding Dr. Earwig and Dr. Hayley by having had taken them away from line. They must have tried to butter the ever-scowling resident with sweet words in order to plant seeds of praises in their favour during his evaluation. Little did they know that Dr. Mirani would have those seeds thrown into eternal dormancy rather than blabbing even a kind word for good will. I was not surprised by this move from interns— for cooing around residents and attendings was fairly common.

So far, Dr. Mirani has hardly spoken a few words to me except during reporting and rounds. I didn't know how much of it has to do in accordance with Dr. Banerji and my failure to show myself before him but it was lingering. I could feel the resident's question gaze every time I exchanged information. He mildly reprimanded me for going to Diagnostics Department all alone without appointment and pitched how disappointed he was which would twist me like a corkscrew. I paid him half an ear of attention because Dr. Banerji was gone and there was nothing I could do. Asking for his address and number would be weird (I was sure Dr. Ramsey had procedures set up to not have DD member's numbers distributed by any means) and even if I ended up at Dr. Banerji's house there was a chance that he would fail to recognize me and hand me over to law enforcers for stalking his premises.

But no matter how much I tried to take Dr. Banerji's situation granted, deep down, I knew how much it hurt me still.

"Heads up. Aurora's here." Sienna warned and somehow, collectively the whole freaking line in front of us straightened up.

When Aurora passed by us, I felt nothing significant about her presence. I mean, why did these people get so nervous around her? Her frame was hardly noticeable just like her personality—although she was fairly a good doctor, I would be honest about it. She hasn't made any mistake while diagnosing patients which was a feat. She has been very good around patients as well and I wondered if she had different personalities set for interaction with specific group of people. For patients, she was sweet. For interns, she harboured epic disgust. For residents, she was agile. For attendings, she was authoritative and constantly reminded them about her aunt. For Dr. Ramsey...well, she was a mute wounded hyena when it came to him and he was the only person who kept her in line. And for me, she reserved enough venom that could bring forward another mass extinction event.