As night fell, my day began. A bike ride to the hospital in yesterday’s scrubs. A quick shower in the locker room and the trade for fresh, but identical, scrubs. Then prompt arrival for board rounds at eleven p.m. The life of an Emergency Medicine resident. As a second-year, the erratic sleep schedule had become a way of life.
Not so for my intern, Aminah, though. She was new to the hospital, English wasn’t her first language, and American culture seemed as foreign to her as a daily shower. Still, her first week had gone well. She’d performed better than expected for her training level. Tonight, though, we’d be on trauma, a wholly different animal.
She beat me to rounds, as she should, looking more awake than I felt, but wore wrinkled blue scrubs rather than hospital-issue greens. She st
