life as it is

As a doctor, it's a norm to face death almost every single day.
It is however different if it is one of us on the other side.
It became big news when one of us appeared at the A&E yesterday, lifeless.
Drowned, they said.

I was in the HDU clinic when the word reached my ears.
The name doesn't ring a bell though. We continued to talk on about this fellow comrade, who once was in my seat at this point of time.
He went on and became an MO.

Then one of those in the clinic described how he looked like. I then realized that I met this person before when I was doing one of my peripheral call. He was the MO oncall that night too.
And what made me remember it was the fact that he asked who I was when I handed over the case. He said he never saw me before in the hospital. I proceeded to say I'm already in my 3rd posting. I guess we never really crossed paths.

My heart goes to his family.
It hits close to me as I like to go swimming, and I've been in places like that too.
Running in my head is the fact that I could have been in the very same situation, should I slip up a bit.

I guess what I'm stating here is, we're doctors. We're human too.

It's harder to grasp the truth when you've trained yourself to save others, but when it comes to one of us, we can't do anything.

A colleague at work today was excited about taking his turn off and going to Penang.
He said "I'll be in Penang tomorrow. What will you be doing?"

I turned to him and said "The same thing I do everyday. Try to save the world from devastation."

To which my MO said, "What uniform will you be wearing then?"

And all the HO's in the room turned to her and the very colleague going to Penang said "This white coat."