A 15-hour shift, an ICU window, and a little girl reaching for a young doctor’s hand. An honest story of what doctor life really looks like.

15th hour at the hospital. I remember complaining about how tired I was. About how badly I wanted to go home. Dinner at 10 – my sole motivation to keep going. One last medication… and I’m free.

I was standing by the ICU window, ticking off my list when a mother screamed. Loud enough to send a shiver down my spine. Painful enough to make me forget the calculation I was doing. 

I ran. Not because I knew what to do, but because I had to do something.

It’s easier to joke about how we, new doctors who need ChatGPT for survival, are given over an entire department to handle. It’s easier to laugh about what’s worse than working 36-hour shifts in the hospital we dreaded for so many years. 

Until it’s a life you are responsible for.

A 1.5-year-old girl. Someone I have waved to every day for the past 5 days. Breathless. An oxygen tube tangled with her NG. Her tiny chest moving, fighting for survival. Lips bluer than the fading sky. I called her name, and she reached out to hold my hand. She stared at me, in hope. 

And in that moment, I forgot she was a patient; she was just a little girl looking at me, trusting me to save her today.

We did what we could, with what we had. But we didn’t have everything. It was about choosing who gets what. 1 monitor, 2 patients. Who gets it? And suddenly medicine wasn’t just about being the perfect doctor. It was about choosing who gets what.

Dinner is here; I get a text. 1 hour later, she gets okay. She’s breathing. And finally, so am I.

Then I walk away. Another patient. Another task. And eventually, food. 

I ate. But with guilt. How am I sitting here eating my comfort food when a little girl is struggling to find her comfort? 

Yet maybe, this is the part of medicine I was never told about. You care for someone and still leave them. You can be scared but still incredibly exhausted. You can spend hours trying to save someone and still be fighting for an early off. You can love your patients enough to go check on them multiple times a day but still be frustrated enough to walk home.

So relax, do your thing. And perhaps this is more about being a human. Maybe it’s about being human enough. 

Another 12 hours, and I went back home, complaining about how hectic the night was. She was moved to another facility. As I whispered a prayer for her, I wondered if I could have done more.

I will never find out how she is now. But I will remember her hand in mine and wonder if she will remember me too.