Page 7 of Ward D
Okay, I haven’t exactly told my mother about my evening on Ward D. As anxious as I am about the experience, she will be even worse. It’s not so much that she worries a lot in general, but she knows Jade was a patient here. She knows that entire history.
She won’t want me returning to Ward D.
“How is psychiatry going?” she asks me. In the background, I can make out the evening news playing on their small television that was purchased about twenty years earlier. My father watches every night without fail. You could set a clock by it.
“It’s fine,” I tell her. “Easy.”
“You’re not interested in—”
“No,” I cut her off. “I’m not interested in psychiatry as a career. Definitely not.”
I would take anything else. Surgery, internal medicine, OB/GYN. I’ll even be that kind of doctor who does nothing but look at rectums all day, because that’s an important job and I could do that. But I can’t treat people with psychiatric disorders. It’s the one thing I’ll never do.
“I wonder how Jade is doing,” my mother blurts out.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” I say, even though I’m sure of no such thing.
“Do you ever hear from her?”
A couple of years ago, I got a Facebook friend request from Jade Carpenter. And not only did I not accept the request, I blocked her. “Not really.”
“I haven’t seen her since the funeral…”
I get a stab of guilt. Two years ago, Jade’s mother died of a drug overdose. Apparently, she had been popping narcotics, and one day she took too many and stopped breathing. The funeral was on the same day as my first big anatomy exam, so I skipped it. I figured Jade wouldn’t even notice I wasn’t there, considering how long it had been since we last talked.
Except part of me thinks she definitely noticed. And she waspissed.
“Mom.” I look down at my watch and then at the heavy elevator doors in front of me, which slide open with a dull thud. “I have to go.”
“Okay, good night then, sweetheart. I love you.”
“Uh-huh,” I say, because I always feel weird saying “I love you” on the phone in public. Except then after we hang up, I feel bad. Why didn’t I tell my mother that I love her? It would have been easy enough to say.
After all, what if that phone call is the last time I ever speak to her?
I push that morbid thought out of my head as I shove my phone back into my pocket. A wave of nurses in flower-printed scrubs sweeps me through the elevator doors, and I end up pushed up against the corner, which is just fine. Two nurses are chatting right next to me, and one of them is smack in the middle of describing a bad date last night in her loud, Long Island accent just as the elevator doors slam shut again.
Here we go…
I watch the buttons light up as we move from floor to floor.Three, four, five…The elevator seems to almost be moving in slow motion. Shouldn’t a hospital elevator move quicker than this? What if we had an emergency? What if I were incardiac arrest? I would be dead by the time we got to the Cath Lab.
Not that I’m in any hurry to get to the ninth floor. But at this point, I just want to get it over with.
“…And he was using his fork to pick food out of his teeth!” the young nurse in front of me exclaims.
“Gross,” her friend comments.
I can’t help but think that I would trade this night for a date with a guy who picks food out of his teeth with a fork. Hell, I would take a guy whopicks his nosewith a fork.
The elevators finally open, and a mildly British female computerized voice announces, “Ninth floor.” I step into the hallway, which is lit by fluorescent lights that show every single crack in the paint on the wall. A giant blue sign has an arrow pointing to the right:
WARD D
It’s not clear to me why the psychiatric unit is called Ward D. I asked Gabby about it when she started the rotation, and she didn’t know either. I didn’t research it further after that.
After I turn the corner, I see a heavy metal door all the way at the end of the hallway. As I get closer, I can make out the lettering on the sign that is hung on the door. There’s a big red stop sign with the warning:
STOP
