Today is my last on-call shift at the hospital. (And there was much rejoicing!) I can't say I'm going to miss it. It's hard to say what part of it I enjoyed least-- wearing three different pagers and the excruciating wait for one of them to go off; responding to a page to hear the words: "we have a full-trauma coming in"; spending endless hours in the stuffy on-call room which makes Harry Potter's broom closet seem like a luxery suite; drifting off to sleep only to be startled awake again by the pager; or the simple and indeterminable boredom of the hospital. There are only so many hours one can spend wasting away at the computer or watching episodes of The West Wing on DVD.
Perhaps there are things I will miss-- the satisfaction of knowing I handled a difficult situation with calm and confidence, or knowing that my presence helped someome get through a traumatic moment in their lives. I do not leave this experience empty-handed. I leave with the stories of other people who's lives I entered into-- however briefly-- at incredibly difficult and painful moments. I have a feeling these people will stay with me for a long while. And even after I forget individual names and faces are blurred over time, I know I will remember the lessons I learned about just how fragile life is, and how precious we all are.
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