It ended without much fanfare. I was on the wards in the morning, in the clinic in the afternoon. I picked up chart after chart, saw a whole mess of patients, and when the waiting room emptied out, that was it. My intern year was over. After all the toil and brouha, I would have thought my ascension to PGY-2 would be met with more pomp and circumstance. Or at least some sort of a coronation ceremony.
How strange, this world of medicine. Walk out of the building one day an intern, walk back in the next day as a "senior." In some ways, this quantum nature of promotion is no different from any other area of academics (high school, or college for example), but the difference is that in college, people don't really expect that much more from you just because you went from freshman to sophomore. I guess in he end, it's all the same old shit, but the notion of being promoted from foot soldier to captain is a little freaky. I hope I don't end up leading my troops over a cliff.
The end of intern year festivities last night started off at Thalia, where we met up with Francis, Amresh, Amit et al. to celebrate Francis's birthday. Francis came all the way back into the big bad city from the wilds of New Haven, so we were glad to see him. Amit and Amresh were surprisingly not at all as bitter as I would have expected them to be after a trying internship, which only solidifies the notion in my mind that they like the pain.
Francis and Kim. You can't see Kim because she got so tanned that when she shows up at night school, they mark her absent.
Amit and Amresh. Or, as I've decided to rename them, Bert and Ernie.
Afterwards, we met up with a bunch of my co-interns (I'm sorry, co-residents) at Bar Nine. Joe and I got there before everyone else, so we each got a drink and decided to wait on some chairs in the back. Rather, he decided.
MICHELLE
Shouldn't we wait in the front, so that we can see them when they come in?
JOE
No, because everyone that comes will come all the way to the back like we did, to look for other people. So we should stay here, and take up these empty seats.
MICHELLE
But what if they don't come all the way to the back?
JOE
They will.
MICHELLE
But what if --
JOE
They will. Now let's sit down so that we can save all these emtpy seats for people.
MICHELLE
Well, OK, I guess.
We were waiting in the back for something like 45 minutes past the scheduled meet-up time before we finally decided to call it. Obviously, I thought, they had decided at the last minute to go to another bar, and I didn't get the message because I didn't check my e-mail earlier this afternoon. We got our stuff together and got ready to walk out the door. But on our way out, we passed by a large group. Our large group. They'd been sitting at the bar for more than half an hour.
JOE
Are those Pediatricians?
MICHELLE
(Glowering)
Yes. Near the front of the bar. The front.
JOE
See, just like I said they would be!
MICHELLE
You said they'd move to the back! I said, "Let's sit near the front, so that we can see them if they walk in," but you said, "Let's sit in the back, because they're all going to move to the back looking for people when they come anyway." But why would they bother walking all the way to the back if we were sitting in the front and they saw us when they walked in? That makes no sense! It's the Meeting-Up-With-Friends Fallacy!
JOE
Uh, let me go get our drinks.
MICHELLE
You mean from where we left them. In the back.
JOE
(Scurrying away)
Anyway, it was fun. Joe was a big hit because he wore the "Trust Me, I'm a Doctor" T-shirt that he got it at Urban Outfitters. I was looking for the same one in women's sizes (not inconceivable, since Urban has many men and women counterpart t-shirts), but for some reason, the "Trust Me, I'm a Doctor" T-shirt only comes in men's sizes. Is it just me, or is that sexist?
Currently watching: "Curb Your Enthusiasm". How can Larry David live in L.A. instead of New York? With that kind of cynicism, we would embrace him as our patron saint.
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