I guess the beginning ... isn't that what everyone who is being sociable and conversationally astute says to prompt someone who is pondering what to say, "Why not start at the beginning?"
Well, to be honest, I actually don't know where to look for the "beginning" ... or even define what beginning I should be seeking.
If I slosh around in the miswired memory banks this is the first recollection of emotional significance.
It was as a student. The lowly medical student. Not even acknowledged as having the bottom rung in the pecking order, more the mix of chicken faeces and discarded feed scattered around the bottom of the pen ... yes, that's what it feels like being a medical student.
And why does this happen? I don’t know for sure but I have my suspicions. Most doctors are men. Most men need regular sexual fulfilment. Most doctors are too fucking busy and too fucking impersonal to have any woman who is willing to have a committed sexual relationship let alone love a doctor. So what happens is that we bastardise our juniors to help relieve those sexual frustrations.
Consultants fuck with their registrars' mind and soul ... who fuck with their residents' spirit who, if they are lucky, get to fuck the nurses.
And medical students? Well they just get the "collateral damage" ... you know, when friendly fire kills one of your own. Just like that, only you don’t die -you get to live on with the emotional wreckage that was never your own, but gets thrust upon you in such a way that it becomes like your own, to love and cherish ... and learn to measure your personal value by.
So here it was, me with 5 other medical students on a ward round in the gynae ward. A ward like the ones you see in the old war movies. A long, very long ward with a row of beds all along one side and another row of beds all along the other side. Dark, dingy with the light provided by small electric bulbs strung from the 30-foot ceilings. The sort of wards that no woman could have her privacy anything other than invaded. Curtains pulled around in a ward with 19 other women who knew exactly what was going on behind those curtains (because every other woman patient there has also had the indignity of 16 or more goggling eyes fixated on her exposed vulva at least once that day).
The smell was, well ... definitely clinical. I guess "clean" ... must have been clean. Would have to be clean ... after all, the nurses were in their nun garb ... they wouldn't work in a place that wasn't clean would they?
At the beginning of the round, perhaps 2.00 o'clock in the afternoon, the consultant looked down at me over the top of his spectacles. Now, "down" is a relative term. I was of a similar height but being a medical student my actual physical presence was dwarfed by the presence of god, so yes, down it was.
"Next time you come on my rounds you will shave young man or you will never be on my rounds again!" "But I did shave this morning sir", I whimpered inaudibly. Inside my head I screamed "FUCK YOU SIR!" but because it wasn't in the rules I didn't ... I couldn't ... I valued my testicles, and my studies, more than my sense of self worth. Fairly you might say that I was being irrational. I guess I could have ignored it, perhaps even acknowledged that it wasn't important and I really was over-reacting. But no. That simple derogatory remark, with the voice tones and the body language ... it was demeaning and made me feel unclean. I suddenly felt ill. It was probably fatigue, but my body told me that the demigod towering over me had spoken truthfully and I was to tremble in his presence. So I did.
You see, I had been awake since midnight ... I went to sleep at 8.00pm but woke at midnight so I could have a free meal. Hospitals used to do that for their staff, back in the days when it was thought a good thing to do. On a meagre study allowance one ran out of money before the next monthly cheque arrived so one got used to having a main meal at midnight ... and taking a few pieces of fruit from the fruit bowl to eat the next day.
So being the student of the labour ward for that night (oh god, that’s another tale to tell!!) I got up at midnight, had a shower and shave (with the old blade that I could not afford to replace), ate ravenously the long-awaited meal and then wandered down to labour ward.
So comes the 2:00pm ward round, 14 hours after I woke ... 7 hours before any other civilised person would have contemplated facing the world. Of course I looked unshaven but with my fatigue, my addled brain and my overwhelming gonadectomy phobia there was no response other than the meek, inaudible reply.
Afterwards I debriefed with my colleagues ... it helped, it always helped ... it always helped us all. I can only thank my other God that I hadn't yet discovered the embrace of alcohol.
Medical student survival ... it was a pack mentality ... no, it was more a "flock" mentality. Protection in numbers. Huddled together we hoped that a few of us survived.
Some of us didn't ... but that too is another story.
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