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It was just hand-off rounds, nothing that Victoria couldn’t handle, and she knew that very well. With almost eight months under her belt with this rotation, she felt she had a pretty steady handle on what it meant to be working in the emergency department, especially after everything that happened with PittFest. Everyone was right that night when they told her that it could only get better from there.
Things have changed, though. By now, almost the entire emergency department knew who her mother was. At first, she was terrified that it would change her relationship with everyone around her, that people would only get close to her to get to her mom, but that was hardly ever the case. The only person who ever really bothers her is Trinity. Still, from everything she’s overheard in surgery consultations between Trinity and Garcia, Victoria thinks that Trinity may have a different ladder up to surgery now.
However, as Dr. Ellis is explaining a case in Central 7, something about a pub brawl that destroyed a pool table, Victoria catches her eyes drifting across the hub, into one of the behavioral health rooms. Through the heavily reinforced glass, a young girl shivered in a t-shirt and pajama pants. Ahmad was standing in sight of the glass, watching the girl, who couldn’t have been much older than 20, as she held her legs against her chest with bandaged arms.
Victoria was captivated by the sight. The girl was almost a mirror image of herself. She had black hair with a bit of a wave, round black eyes, and golden-brown skin. She was fighting to look away, but a larger part of her refused. The girl awakened something that she had buried deep inside of her chest, along with tear-soaked pages of journals in the drawers of her childhood bedroom. The cracked drywall that had seen her grow into a child prodigy, and watched as the weight of her parents’ world on her shoulders made her into someone she could hardly recognize.
“Javadi!” Dr. Ellis pierced through her thoughts like a knife. She turned back to Dr. Ellis, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Trinity stifle a laugh while Samira gave her a side-eye. She realized that she had zoned out for far too long and was now going to embarrass herself in front of her colleagues and her patient. Thankfully, he was still asleep.
“Oh- um, I’m sorry, I’m still waking up, what was that?” The words came stumbling out of her mouth before she could think of what to say.
“I was asking what you think the next step is for our patient.” Ellis deadpanned. Victoria internally thanked her for not making her slip-up a big deal. She does not need another “funny” nickname to go around and cause another awkward conversation with her parents.
She glanced at the patient, “Right, sorry, um, does he have an intracranial pressure monitor placed yet?” She looked back at Dr. Ellis, surprised to see a flash of approval cross her face.
“Good thinking, call for a neurosurgery consult.” She looked at the rest of the group, “Alright, go take care of your patients,” elbowing Trinity on the way out of the room, and headed to the hub to finish charting.
Victoria stepped away from the group, trying to remove the vision of the girl in BH-2 from her mind. It didn’t take long for her to get caught up in the flow of the ED, but she could tell that people were looking at her, worried. Her small slip-up during hand-off shouldn’t have warranted this large a response, especially from people who weren’t even there to witness it. Her concern only grew when she walked by a hushed conversation in a language she couldn’t understand between Perlah, Princess, and Trinity, and how they cut themselves off at the sight of her.
She tried to stick to cases that weren’t in the view of BH-2. She charted facing away from the tempered glass, the glass that kept calling for her attention. Every time she was called for a trauma, she couldn’t help but glance before pushing through the glass doors. She had a hard time focusing, and Ogilvie wasn’t helping. Every time Robby would ask a question, he was just one second faster with an answer. With residency placements coming out soon, she couldn’t let that girl have this much of an effect on her.
It didn’t catch up to her until Dana caught her between patients, “Hey kid, you doing alright? You seem a bit… frazzled.” She smiled sideways at the younger girl, hoping that it was just an off day. Javadi had grown on the whole emergency department, and the difference in her behavior today was noticed.
Victoria’s eyes widened, shocked at the question, “Yeah! I’m doing… great! You know, I’m just really killing it today… haha…” Her sentence dropped off as she realized how hard it was to keep her facade up in front of Dana.
“Why don’t you go take a seat in the staff lounge for a bit?” Dana asked, placing a hand on the girl's back and leading her towards the lounge. Victoria didn’t want to take a break, because if she stopped moving, she would have to start thinking. And the type of thinking her brain wanted to do was in no way productive.
She stopped walking, “No, sorry, I think I’m good. There’s just a patient that’s kind of throwing me off.”
Dana’s eyebrows scrunched together, “One of your patients? What’s going on?” Victoria realized this was being blown way out of proportion and started shaking her head. “Kid, if something is going on that could affect your work today, you gotta let me know.” A spark of sympathy showed in Dana’s eyes.
Victoria let out a sigh, “It’s just the girl in BH-2. I saw her this morning during hand-off, and I can’t get her out of my head,” she blinks a couple times, realizing she may have said too much, “I’m sorry, I think it’s just me being nervous about residency and all of that stuff, the little things are getting to me.”
Dana’s eyes flash with recognition, her head tilting to the side, “Ahhh, Soraya… she was brought in from Carnegie Mellon last night, her RA found her on the floor of the communal bathroom in her dormitory, she’s been placed on a 302 and there’s no beds up in psych for her, it’s looking like she’s going to spend the rest of her 72 hours down here.”
Victoria felt her throat tighten with every word that came out of Dana’s mouth, “Right, thank you for clearing that up, will you excuse me?” And before the older woman responded, she was off to the bathroom, feeling Dana’s eyes follow her.
There was no more holding back. The second the bathroom door closed, tears were flowing out of her eyes, and it was getting harder and harder to catch her breath. Her hands gripped the edge of the sink as she dry-heaved, watching teardrops hit the white porcelain. It had been a long time since she had felt a similar way to the way Soraya did, like there was no other way through life.
The pressure of starting undergrad as a “child prodigy” at thirteen only grew as she advanced in her education. Finding friends her age after graduating from high school was close to impossible, and any complaints to her parents would turn into a teaching moment. However, considered mature enough for unfiltered internet access, she found more and more ways to cope with the stress she endured every day, and almost none of them were healthy.
She recognized the look in that girl’s eyes because she had seen it on her own face in a mirror, in photos from her graduation and sixteenth birthday party, and on her learner’s permit after she stayed up the whole night studying for her test.
Her incredible skill with first aid of lacerations wasn’t because of intelligence; it was because of experience. And the only person who knew that was herself, and six full journals. She could feel that old, yet familiar, darkness pooling in her stomach. Something that she hadn’t felt in years. She lifted her head, looking at herself in the mirror.
She had changed so much, so far away from that girl in those photos pretending to smile for the sake of her parents. She had built a life for herself, and while she still had a long way to go, she was starting to get there. She had stable friendships, an almost-stable job, and was about to be an actual doctor, something that felt like such a far-off dream for thirteen-year-old Victoria. She grew up faster than any child should have to, but she turned out great and made it through what she hopes will be the worst part.
She was smart. She was talented. She deserved to be here, alive, working towards residency in the emergency department. She worked hard to get here, harder than most other people, and she was so thankful for every opportunity life had given her.
She wiped her eyes and took a few deep breaths, hoping her short absence wasn’t noticed, but even if it was, at least it would show someone cared enough to worry, and isn’t that enough to feel special?