dear front desk girl

I wrote this as a student. As a conscientious student, I remember feeling the angst of how annoyed the front desk girls were with me. As weird as it sounds, they were most angered by the students who actually did their homework. Because it demanded time and energy from them. They had to pull the charts. They had to work on Saturdays to help us. The ones who showed up on weekends to research their patient's charts...This was me working out my angst in poem form. 

I know it must seem that I’m always at your window

waiting

to bug you,

asking for a chart, or even for a stack,

or for you to access

that all-powerful schedule that reigns over both of our lives.

my furrowed brow might seem to convey anger.

in reality, 

I’m concentrating

on the next thing

Mr. Attending asked me to do,

after he told me

how wrong I was

the last time.

forgetting

might suggest

that I’m not taking the teaching seriously, enough.

and sometimes, only sometimes,

furrowing my brow

making it harder 

for the tears to stream

down my face

when I’ve fucked something up, 

yet again.

I know it must seem

I’m demanding so much

on the days 

when I come back

like some adolescent.

pulling up to the drive-up In and Out.

I imagine 

it is rather annoying.

what now?

you must think

as I approach for the umpteenth time.

in reality, 

some days the demanding weights

almost crush.

world full of Attendings

residents

patients

professors

pulling,

in multiple directions,

usurping or contradicting one another.

never doing enough.

never learning enough.

chart note, never quite right enough.

sometimes, crazy as it is

I lighten my load

creating a delusional reality

where

I’m not the one being pushed around.

I know it must seem that I’m moody as I stand here

waiting.

in reality,

I'm pausing,

catching my breath
as my patient just left.
the conversation we had took effort.

wanting

to get it right,

to communicate 

support,

to not fall down in a puddle on the floor.

maintaining,

appropriate expressions,

did not come easy.

new to this realm

of carrying other people’s burdens,

I’ve never had to tell someone

of the cancer

found inside the walls of ovaries.

now I’m standing at this window,

resting,

my soul.

letting my guard down

worrying not

about smiling.

I don’t know much,

but,

I have learned that ovarian is a bad one.