This essay is part of the Between Chapters project, inspired by the book. What chapters are you between? How did you get from one chapter to another? Share your story here.
What Chapter Are You…
Leaving:
A life in America that was predictable.
In:
Building a new life in Israel with career change and young kids.
Entering:
The settled stage, but still filled with questions.
Ideally, on my last day of work, I would have stopped at every nurse’s station to say goodbye. I would have taken an absurd number of selfies with all of my favorite people. I would have paused on the pedestrian bridge and taken the perfect picture of the hospital. I would have sat in my car, written a heartfelt post on social media, and driven away with that satisfying, albeit rare, feeling of complete closure. I would have had a moment to say goodbye to my career as a physician assistant.
Instead, on that last day, I got the reality of hospital life on a Friday. I’d spent most of the day trying to transfer one of my female patients to the ICU. There were endless phone calls and several trips to find an attending physician willing to accept the transfer. Her tests had to be completed. Complications kept piling up. More consultants needed to be added to her case, and I had to contact each one and impress upon them the importance of seeing her before the weekend. I still had notes to finish and other patients to care for. I still had to say goodbye to everyone in the hospital. And I still had to get home in time for Shabbat.
Two of my closest work friends dragged me into the doctors’ lounge for a quick goodbye. They had found kosher cupcakes to share with me. We took one rushed picture, hugged quickly, and went right back to work. At the very last minute, I grabbed my things and raced across the pedestrian bridge. The next time I stopped moving, I was standing in front of my Shabbat candles. And that was it. My hospital life was over.
It is hard to explain to people who have never worked in a hospital how a building that holds so much fear and uncertainty, a place that contains the worst days of so many people’s lives, can also feel like a second home. How you can feel connected to hundreds of coworkers, some deeply and some only in passing, but all of them part of the same strange ecosystem. How certain smells and sounds can take you right back: cardiac monitors beeping, a ventilator cycling, the snap of a pair of gloves.
Now in Israel, halfway across the world, I’ve visited hospitals a few times and they still feel familiar. The hallways are always impossible to navigate. The lobbies look like shopping malls. I walk past patient transporters and think of all the hospital employees I have known. A group of providers hurries by, and I think of my old self and the ease with which I moved through my hospital. On Friday mornings, my boss and I did rounds together. As we raced through the halls, someone would almost always call out, “Dream team in the house!”
I miss the feeling of caring for patients. I miss the early mornings, sitting down in front of the computer to see what had happened overnight. New patients. New complications. Old problems. Good news and bad, all mixed together.
I won’t pretend to look back with rose-colored glasses; there is plenty of pain in the hospital. Plenty of times I called family members with shaking hands and a pounding heart to share terrible news. Plenty of times I felt frustrated, helpless, and upset. Plenty of times I daydreamed about a boring office job where no one died. But on that last day, I knew how special it all had been. I wanted to look back up at the windows, see the lights, and thank that building for being my home for so many years. I wanted to whisper a farewell to the hospitals I had worked in before that one, because those had been homes too.
I can’t say for sure that if I had paused and taken that time I would feel any differently now. I don’t know that a few quiet seconds of gratitude would have made it easier to move on or magically put it to rest.
But now, the last day firmly in the past, I sit and scroll through videos and pictures. The best one is a video of a fellow PA dressed in an inflatable dinosaur costume, wearing flashing neon shoes, riding a knee scooter down a closed-off hallway. There are pictures from March and April 2020. So many selfies in gowns, masks, and gloves. And there is my favorite picture, taken nearly a year before I left, on a day when I actually did stop to look back at the building as I walked toward my car. The sun is setting, and the sky behind the hospital is beautiful.
I had a wonderful career. I helped a lot of people. I held patients’ hands as they died. I held phones and iPads so loved ones could say goodbye. I spent hours listening to people, and even more hours explaining diagnoses, treatment plans, and why you cannot stay in the hospital forever. I met extraordinary people. I had the privilege of learning from incredibly knowledgeable and talented providers. I was part of the living, breathing ecosystem of a hospital.
I don’t know whether I will find my way back there. I don’t know whether that is where I am meant to be. But I am grateful the memories exist. I am grateful to have those years. And wherever I end up, I hope it grants half the sense of home that a hospital once gave me.
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