The doctor is sick
Now, as she dozes, she awakens to every noise, and the shadows look like people, and she knows the nightmares wait for her again, so she fights sleep. Paxil made her hear voices (the psychiatrists proclaimed this “classic” for her illness; she shrugged her shoulders in response) and so now she listens carefully, holding her breath, in bed, trying to hear voices. She thought she heard something. Of course, now she is hypersensitive. Now it is hard not to describe everything as “classic” for the illness. If she thinks about it, from junior high school onwards she was “classic.” What nonsense! Her vision is 20/20 in hindsight. Who wouldn’t find madness in their past if they looked hard enough?
The doctor is sick. The night lasts forever. Somebody opens the door because, at this hospital, they check every 15 minutes, 24 hours per day, to make sure the doctor has not slit her wrists or hanged herself or found another way to end her sick life. For this reason, they have confiscated her shoelaces, and she has to floss at the nurses’ station. She startles as they open the door, and screams out loud. They reassure her they are just checking on her, and now they are gone, and the doctor is left to imagine them walking down the corridor to the nurses’ station, shaking their heads, saying, “That doctor sure is sick!”.
Yes, the doctor is sick. Who is she anyway? She is not even a doctor! She is just a third-year medical student who is fighting, fists up, her descent into madness. Has she won? She is trying to find a way to accept what she is. Does that mean she is a winner or a loser? It is chronic, but manageable, bipolar madness. There are lots of other people like her. But it is still overwhelming, and she is not even sure she wants to join anybody else. She never defined herself as part of any group before. Now she tries to get back to normal—but what can that mean now, after all this time, after release from a mental hospital, after taking a leave from school, after swallowing 10 pills a day (every day, for the rest of her life?), after finding out she is so sick? It is time for her meds. She hasn’t told most of her classmates or her parents because she doesn’t want them to find out that the doctor is sick. She doesn’t want to know if the doctor is sick. She doesn’t want to ponder if the doctor can ever get well.
The doctor misses seeing her patients. Tears are in her eyes and she swallows her sadness as best as she can. She aims to keep a brave face, but she is sad for what she has lost. She tries to shake that off, but it keeps returning. Like a virus, it sneaks up on her and she is shivering, feverish with grief. She hears stories from her friends as they continue to round, heal, cut and sew, take histories, stay up all night, get yelled at by senior physicians, and she wants so much to be there. She is in nowhere land. To some, a few, those who know the twisted tale of the last few months, she is sick. To those who know nothing of it, she is her usual slightly eccentric self, but well. But really she knows she is a liar and a fraud. Because somewhere in the middle she exists alone.
Well, no, she is not alone. Her husband stands by her and he is wonderful. He holds her and laughs with her and tells her she is beautiful and amazing. But she misses seeing lots of people; she thrives on people. Doesn’t anyone understand that she needs people to be alive? Is that so wrong? Is that so sick? She feels sorry for herself, sorry for what she must give up, sorry that she must graduate a year later, sorry that she cannot be with people, sorry that she feels so sorry so much of the time. And then she gets angry with herself for feeling so sorry and being so sick.
Every now and then, the doctor sees another side of things. She surfs the Internet and reads books and she finds out about lots of smart and creative and beautiful people who were sick like she is. These people have twisted, wonderful abilities but so many of them plunged to their death or swallowed pills or died so young. They wrote books or composed symphonies or made people laugh or created works of art but then they died. And so she is left feeling strong and beautiful sometimes, but also lonely and sad that all those souls have deserted her. She is sad that they have left her in this madness, and she must fight to stay alive all by herself. Then, every now and then, there are flickers of wisdom and insight and she knows she will stay alive and she will create beautiful things too, one day.
