Somewhere inside the multiverse of KEM Hospital, two girls got down the same hostel lift.
Walked down the same route besides the basketball & tennis courts.
Ate at the same table on the canteen.
Ordered the same dish, yes, you can guess, it was the (in)famous Medu vada with some boiled eggs. Then they got down the same stairs that led out of their dingy, old central canteen.
One of the two girls, she took a turn heading to her lectures, excited to see her friends again and waiting to talk about the fresher’s week.
‘What dress should I wear? What shoes would go along? Should I ask out my crush for the dance? Or no no that’s always a mistake, isn’t it! There’s so much to do! And such less time.
There’s an assignment for tomorrow but tomorrow is also the college dance.’
Ah this girl really has a lot going on…
The other girl though, she took a different turn from the canteen, heading for the hospital.
Oblivious to what’s going on in the medical college, she heads to her hospital to start her 24 hours emergency duty. She too has a lot going on.
‘Did the baby who received CPR last evening from her seniors survive to this day? Was the boy with dengue hemorrhagic shock who came bleeding through every bodily orifice as well as bleeding into body cavities, did he live or did he die? Will I get to eat lunch today? Will I get to sleep a bit tonight? I hope no one dies today.’
Just one year ago she was doing everything the first girl is doing right now. But now, it’s like that world never even existed.
Like a surreal dream that happens while you’re asleep but now, you’re awake. And so awake that you see everything clearly.
The long OPD queues, the never ending agony of the patients and the struggle of the doctors.
It’s funny how two completely different worlds can coexist in the same niche.
One completely chaotic, hot and burning while the other cold, calm and at ease.
For instance, the hot volcanoes under the cold dry Antarctica. Or for that matter, even a hospital and a medical college.
In this case, KEM Hospital and Seth GS Medical College.
Yes, hospital, a chaotic mess with all time emergencies and sleepless doctors and stories of suffering and healing and life and death.
And medical college, a place of learning and growing and young minds living and laughing and dreaming about their futures and falling in and out of love, oblivious to the parallel universe that exists so close to them.
Like a baby, one moment inside the womb and just the next moment outside.
For the sake of it, only a moment passes. But life, life is never the same.
We’re out of the womb now and what’s waiting is real life, real patients and real suffering of people who walk to us with the hope of easing it.
I can only hope we do justice to them and at the end, to ourselves.
_-Roshni_
This article has been written by Dr. Roshni Cheema who is an intern at Seth GS Medical College, Mumbai.
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