When I turned to go on to my next room, I saw Dr. Weller standing in the doorway, a slow grin forming around his lips. He stepped back into the corridor as I emerged with the juice cart.
"I overheard what you said." He leaned toward me. "If Mrs. Winthrop heard you giving patients medical advice, she would send you right home."
"I didn't give—"
"You let her believe it might be her gallbladder. Uh-uh-uh," he said, wagging his forefinger. Then he laughed. "It's all right. Chances are very good that you're right. Actually," he said, leaning back against the wall and folding his arms, "you did a smart thing deciding to work in the hospital during your summer vacation. You'll pick up a lot just hanging around and listening."
"That's what I thought, too," I said.
"You know, I'm studying and learning every day myself. I'm interning here under Dr. Bardot. He's constantly testing me." He smiled. "I bet you can help me," he said, nodding with a thoughtful look.
"Me? How?"
"You can be my study partner. You know, ask questions, test me on stuff. Do you have a heavy social schedule?" he asked.
"Social schedule?"
"Do you punch a clock with a boyfriend, too?"
"Oh. No, not anymore," I said.
"Good. Maybe you'll give me some time, then. I promise you'll learn a lot too," he added. "And I don't mean just medical information. I can fill you in on what to expect, how to prepare your applications, interviews. Ifs getting harder and harder to get into a good medical school in this country, you know. There are a lot of valedictorians out there competing for the same spaces," he warned.
I thought a moment. Learning about all this was why I had wanted to work here.
"Okay," I said. "Do you study during breaks?"
"Oh, no. We'll do it after work. I don't live far from here. It's a small apartment I took near Tulane University. That's where I attended premed and med school. You expect to go there?"
"I might, yes," I said.
"Fine. I'll fill you in on all the nitty-gritty. What's your shift tomorrow? Same as today?"
"Yes."
"I'm free about the same time. We can start right away—if that's all right with you, that is," he said.
I hesitated. I liked the idea of working with an intern, but why had he chosen me and so quickly? "Wouldn't you rather work with someone who is already a medical student?" I asked.
"They want to study only what they need." He smiled again. "Hey, I won't bite you, and even if I did, I'd treat the wound," he added and laughed. "But if you think you'll be uncomfortable or—"
"No, it's all right."
"Great. And don't worry about getting home afterward. I'll see to that. I'll even make you dinner, if you like. Nothing fancy, of course. I'm not living on a doctor's salary yet. Fact is, and you better know it now, interns are medical slaves. But we all gotta pay our dues. See you later." He winked and walked down the corridor.
I wondered if I had agreed too fast to help him. He was already an intern. I probably wouldn't under-stand half the questions. Surely I would just be wasting his time and my own, I thought, but then I thought, He should know that, and yet he still wants me to help him.
"This isn't exactly a place to daydream," I heard someone say. Mrs. Crandle was standing in the door-way of my next room.
"Oh, I'm sorry," I said and hurried on.
Sophie wasn't exaggerating about the problems we could encounter as aides. An elderly man in room messed his bed, and I had to clean it up. I must have swallowed a hundred times and held my breath for an hour before I was finished. Mrs. Crandle made me wash down the bed frame and scrub the floor around the bed as well.
Sophie and I had to run down to the laundry and carry up fresh linens. I emptied a half dozen bedpans and cleaned bathrooms. I thought my first day at the hospital would be relatively uneventful and just the sort of work I had expected, but shortly before my shift ended, Mrs. Conti, the elderly woman in room 200, had a heart attack. Mrs. Crandle called for a Code E Blue, and Dr. Weller came running from the other end of the corridor. I watched them wheel in a defibrillator. Another doctor came from the third-floor cardiac care unit. They worked and worked, but Mrs. Conti's heart had stopped dead and didn't start again.
Her roommate, Mrs. Brennen, cried hysterically and had to be sedated. There was a flag of mourning on everyone's face. Mrs. Conti had been dozing when I had delivered her juice and had barely opened her eyes when I returned to freshen her water pitcher and see if she needed anything. I had seen and heard her heart monitor, and Mrs. Brennen had told me that Mrs. Conti had been upstairs in the cardiac care unit for ten days before being brought down to the second floor.
"Why wasn't she still upstairs?" I whispered to Dr. Weller when he emerged after the failed effort to revive her had ended.
"They sent her down two days ago because she had made enough progress and they needed room for another patient." He shrugged. "Can't always predict it," he said and then flashed a challenging smile. "Still want to be a doctor?"
I looked back at the room in which the dead woman still lay. Her family didn't know yet, but I was sure she would soon be mourned and missed. When I envisioned the saddened children and grandchildren, I felt anger boil in the base of my stomach. If I had been her doctor, she wouldn't have been moved out of the cardiac care unit.
"More than ever," I replied.
He tilted his head back and laughed. "Maybe you're the real thing. Something tells me I've found the right study helper." He looked back at the room and sighed. "Gotta go do the paperwork," he said. "That's a part of being a doctor you'll soon learn to hate too."
Maybe I was naive, but I thought there was no part of being a doctor I would hate.
I hadn't done all that much, but when my shift ended, I felt exhausted. Most of it was from the tension of starting the work and the emotional strain that resulted from seeing someone die. I changed back into my street clothing and left the corridor with Sophie. She and I stepped into Mrs. Morgan's office to punch out.
"How did you do?" she asked and looked at Sophie. "She did fine, just fine," Sophie said quickly. "She didn't throw up once."
Mrs. Morgan smiled. "Well, that's an accomplishment. Here is your regular card. Punch in when you begin your shift and punch out when you end, and remember to buy some white shoes," she reminded me.
"Yes, ma'am."
Sophie and I left the hospital. The humidity hadn't diminished a degree, but the sun had gone down enough to lower the temperature.
"My mother says I'm lucky because I work in an air-conditioned hospital," Sophie said as we started down the driveway.
"What does she do?"
"Laundry."
"What about your father?"
"He works in the Quarter. He's a cook. I got two younger sisters still in school and a brother who's in the army. What about you?"
"I have twin brothers, twelve years old. Where do you live, Sophie?"
"On the other side of the Quarter. I take the car to Canal Street."
We waited for the streetcar together.
"How long have you worked in the hospital?" I asked her.
"Little more than a year."
"Don't you want to return to school? There's a lot more for you to learn," I said.
She dropped her eyes quickly. "Can't," she said. "Gotta work."
"Why? Doesn't your father make good money as a cook?" I knew good cooks in the Quarter were valuable.
Sophie shrugged. "Maybe," she said. "We don't know for sure."
"What? Why not?"
"He doesn't live with us," she told me just as the streetcar came around to our station. She hurriedly boarded, I sat beside her, and we both looked out the window as the car rattled down the track. "He doesn't even come to the house anymore," she continued. "He just sends some money around from time to time. If I want to see him, I have to go down to the restaurant, but he never has time to talk much."
"I'm sorry," I said. When the car approached my station and I stood up, Sophie looked very impressed.