Read Online The Intern Blues by Robert Marion - Free Book Online

on some other interviews and got a look at some of the other programs and suddenly the Bronx didn’t look all that bad to me. So whatever happens during this internship, I can’t blame anybody but myself; it’s all my fault.
    Carole wasn’t all that happy about my coming here. I guess I should mention Carole. We’ve been going out off and on since we were seniors in college. She’s an accountant in Manhattan and she lives in New Jersey, so my being in the Bronx is probably the worst thing that could happen to our relationship. We’ll probably never get to see each other over the next year. Not that it would be much better if I were working in Manhattan. It’s pretty hard to keep up a reputation as Mr. Romance when you’re working a hundred hours a week. Oh, well; being an intern is probably going to be like becoming a monk; except monks have a stronger union, I think.
    Well, I’m going to try to get some sleep now. I’m sure I’ll wind up walking around the apartment half the night. I’ve got all these butterflies in my stomach, and it feels like they’ve just organized a softball game.
    Monday, July 1, 1985
    What a great idea it is to start new interns on Saturday! What better way to greet someone who’s not only completely new to the hospital and doesn’t even know where the bathrooms are, but also who has never worked as an intern before, than to have him cover a ward filled with twenty-five sick patients, none of whom he’s ever seen. I wonder who came up with that brilliant stroke of genius?
    Needless to say, Saturday was a complete disaster. I started off the day just nervous, but by the time we finished work rounds at about ten, I was completely petrified. I mean, they had kids with meningitis who could die without batting an eyelash, kids with asthma who were on oxygen, and they were telling me to do things like “Get a blood gas on that kid” [blood gas: an analysis of the acid, oxygen, and carbon dioxide levels in the blood; usually performed on patients in respiratory distress] . “Check the X ray on that kid,” “That other kid needs a new IV,” etc., etc. I had to sit down for an hour after rounds, just to talk myself out of quitting right then!
    I have to admit, the technical stuff is about the only thing I can do. So I started off by drawing all the bloods and starting the IVs that were needed. Then I was heading for the lab, wherever the hell that was, when I got called down to the emergency room to pick up a patient. And that was the first time I got lost. I couldn’t believe it, I wound up wandering around in the basement of the hospital for twenty minutes, having no idea where I was. I found the morgue, I found the Engineering Department, but the ER seemed to be missing. I had this medical student with me, but he wasn’t much help; this was the second week of his first rotation and he was more confused than I was, if such a thing was possible. We finally found a guy down there who spoke English and I asked him where the ER was. He laughed at me for a few minutes and then told me I was on the wrong floor, it was one flight up.
    Anyway, my first admission was a six-year-old with asthma. My first admission. What a moment! I wanted to have the kid bronzed so I could hang him from my car’s rearview mirror, but his parents wouldn’t give their consent. I managed to find my way back to the ward with the kid, who didn’t seem all that sick, and then I got yelled at by the head nurse: “You have an admission? Nobody told me about any admission! We’re not ready for an admission!” So I made a mistake, but she stood there, blocking the door to the treatment room like she wasn’t going to let us in. What’d she expect me to do, bring the kid back down to the ER and call and tell her I was coming up with him? The way things were going, I probably would have screwed up, gotten off on the