Humility and order, according to an emergency doctor

He can do it all. He can boss around

Patients and staff, nurses like other doctors

We’re in his emergency. He’ll carry the blame for the hemorrhage.

We ask him to save more than one lives on the daily.

He must be nimble, make quick moves and swift decisions.

No time for a gazillion opinions.

 

His are the ones they will comply with. All decisions fall, in fine, on his shoulders.

This is an emergency room, not a circus! The stakes are high, everything matters!

Here went his life for the past several decades. His schedule was all over the place.

He had a wife and several children. While he ruled Emerg’, they didn’t get to see his face.

 

He made peace with the idea. His wife and children aussi. We needed him there

More than they ever needed him, home. Counter-intuitive for most, evident for them.

The family was raised in utmost faith and respect for what devotion and honour

Mean for the ones who sacrifice their lives to save the life of another, let alone a stranger.

 

One day, as he returned, after yet another 12-hour shift-show, he lamented

Softly: he’s not the kind to complain, but he had to admit he felt a hinge of anger

When the wife of a drunken man screamed at him, the doctor, that she’d cut off his head

If he dared touch her to assess the extent of the damage left to her face by her lover

 

Claiming she would rather die than have his hands on her, given his “colour”.

 

He left the room that morning, quietly, the emergency doctor has good manners.

He asked the nurse practitioner to fill out the intake form instead of him, if she wanted.

The next round was about to take over, so he could use his gateway away from the sinners.

That woman, after all, was the victim of a larger crime fueling the one she just committed.

 

He was neither going to die on the hill of proving her wrong, nor waste his time away from home.

She wasn’t the first nor the last nor the worst among all the crap the doctor witnessed at work,

But that morning left him depleted, it was different from all the others. He had reached 65

Which was the mandatory cut-off for his ruling over the emergency rooms, and the hive

 

Of the operating room for which he was not nimble enough anymore,

that’s what they said.

 

He didn’t appeal the decision. The rule applied to everyone. He was never above

The rules in place to save him from himself and keep his eyes focused on love.

He knew it was time, so he could quit without regret, but grace wanted him to leave

His kingdom on the disdain of an ungrateful and ignorant patient: his pet peeve!

 

As he put away his scrubs for his last day, he let his anger turn into sorrow. He was human

And the feelings he felt had all the reasons to arise. That woman was obnoxious, yet human.

 

By the time he was done tying the last button on his wrinkleless button up

He got himself together. He smiled as he heard his mother singing “Chin up,

Buttercup! When they go low, we go high, you know the wise when you feel her”

That’s what the doctor’s mother told him, and what he taught his sons and daughter:

 

“Remember,

That having pet peeves only consumes the ones who drag them around in their temper”

 

Being groomed by a loving mother, grateful for her constant wisdom, the doctor knew

He never had to get back at those who teased him, he learned to spare the few

Even when they said or did the most atrocious things to one another.

His calling was to be the doctor, not the policeman nor the minister.

 

To each their own.

 

He had done his job, he would go back home, and notice at the entrance

On his way out, one of his former students. An intern like no other.

On all points radically different from him, except for his reverence

For love and compassion, or what it means to be humbly entrusted with the power

 

To boss around just anyone.

 

“It’s evident to me that you should speak last, not first, in our postmortems.

If you tell the room what’s on your mind, they will not feel at ease to contradict and interfere

With your thought process and your authority. Since you’re the boss, you should stay quiet.”

 

Is what the intern told the doctor on his first day in his service, under his command, after the death

Of yet again another ineffable case of humankind being cruel to fellow human beings, traumatizing

Everyone in Emerg’, except for this young man who was right to challenge the master, softly smiling.

 

 

***

Savato Kiriako, ayant jadis croisé un emerg' doc qui ainsi parlait d'humilité