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To look at someone and to see someone were very different things. Eye contact could be a nebulous thing; casual, nervous, assessing. It could be measured or frivolous, much like anything else.
Our eyes roam countless things throughout the day, eye-contact born from sheer necessity; to observe the world around us, to navigate, to interact. It makes all the difference, but in the end it’s meaningless. Who remembers the exact shape of the pavement they step on? The exact hue of the stoplight? There are an endless number of things to look at. The colour of the sky, the darkness of the clouds, the milkiness of our coffee.
There is, however, significantly less that is truly seen.
To truly see something is to understand. To catalogue, to seek answers and to receive. To truly see is the ability to learn and remember, to commit to memory and to keep. To care.
And caring is the hardest thing to do; it was giving pieces of yourself away and replacing them with foreign matter. It was wondering if Mr. Chopra’s ankle healed okay, if Joyce’s pain was back, if Caroline ever found her daughter’s stuffed bear. It was filling yourself to the brim with worry and questions with no answer.
It’s an effortful thing to do, which Samira understands. She understands why people aren’t able to extend that care towards her.
Samira stood from her chair in the break room. Dr. Al-Hashimi had left a few minutes ago and she’d sat here, staring at the linoleum.
Samira likes geriatrics—and she likes ultrasound, sports medicine, and toxicology—but the reality of these options is obvious to her: they were grasps for control as the narrative slipped between her fingers like sand. Was that not clear?Now, in her lowest moment, was it not clear that she needed a lighthouse? Could no one hear the anguish that painted every syllable?
It burned in her chest; a hot and shamed thing. Samira had been branded, not for the first time, except she’s been mislabelled.
Ambition is the mortar that holds her bricks together. Ambition is the wind in her sails and the light paving her way all the same. Samira Mohan is nothing without her ambition gripped firmly in hand. She was not someone to be caught back-footed, without a plan, applying for open spots. This was not her and something was wrong if only someone could just see her.
The linoleum squeaked under her feet as she left the room.
But seeing someone was caring and caring was energy lost. Samira reserved her sight for those under her care and she assumed the same of her colleagues. It was expected that nobody saw her and it was okay.
She rounded the hub, a flurry of movement in every direction. They were functioning at level of chaos that set her teeth on edge, but she braced herself as she approached the white board.
“Any update on Brooke?” she asks, head tilted towards Mel.
“No changes yet but, I’ve been keeping the progress notes,” comes the immediate response.
Samira hums. There should be something soon. She looks at Mel, nodding once, “Keep me updated, please.”
Mel nods rapidly, setting off towards Brooke’s room.
Samira walks over to the rack on the hub to grab the right chart and she sets off to North 3 instead. She pulls the curtain open and smiles, “Hi! I’m Dr. Mohan, what seems to be the problem today?”
An older woman greets her with a pained smile. “Hi, Doctor,” she says, shifting slightly from her reclined position. “It’s my lower back, it’s been really bothering me and I haven’t been able to tend to my garden in days.”
Osteoarthritis, Lumbar spine stenosis, Epidural abscess, Cauda Aquina..
Samira’s smile pulls to the side in sympathy and she sits down at her stool. “I’m sorry to hear that, Elise, let’s see what we can do to get you back out there.”
Physicians had the gift of sight; to see and to know the answers. It was, however, easy to get lost in the analysis—hyper-vigilance born of maladapted nervous systems—or to lose the ability entirely—a life untouched by those around them. Samira walked a balance of these two extremes, teetering and constantly afraid. She’d learned, in the past year, the proper balance with her patients. Yet, some days still tipped towards breakdowns in the bathroom and others towards silent nights, sitting in the dark of an empty apartment.
As she began Elise’s exam and work-up, she considered Dr. Al-Hashimi’s advice, the irony of her patients age not entirely lost on her. The weight of Samira’s thoughts was shifting on the scale. She waited to see where they might settle; she’d yet to feel the sting of tears or the wounded animal instinct to hide.
Samira palpates down the length of Elise’s back, assessing tenderness, and slowing working through the history.
Tenderness starting at L1, mild swelling. Reduced range of motion, unable to bend low enough to pick weeds anymore. Hydrangea’s are bucking to weight, but she can’t work long enough to finish the support. Occasional muscle spasms.
She’s not sure if there was balance to be found anywhere but here. The medicine was what still made sense to her, it was the only thing left in focus while her plans seemed to blur and disappear.
“Thank you, Elise,” Samira says, stepping away from the bed. She uncaps her pen, jotting her notes down. “We’ll need to do an X-ray, if you’ll wait here I’ll put the orders in and someone will be along to take you?”
Elise nods back at her, “Thank you, Dr. Mohan, and thank you for listening.”
The smile on Samira’s face felt wooden; it pulled at her muscles, stiff and fake. She nods, grabbing her chart and leaving the room. She heads to the hub, depositing the chart in the correct rack before speed-walking to the lockers.
The more she looked around, the more she wondered if she was invisible. She could see the way Victoria, Trinity, and Dennis seemed to gravitate towards each other, the same with Mel and Frank, the same with Princess and Perlah and Donnie, Dennis, and Frank. The map of connections felt obvious now, especially the lack of lines that could be drawn to her. Where had she been when those lines were drawn?
Samira can’t seem to remember the day that these friendships were assigned and picked. She realizes, suddenly, that 6 years was a long time. Six years was not insignificant.
She couldn’t breathe; her lungs burning as she heaved in gulps of air. The space near the lockers was blissfully empty as she rested her forehead against the cold metal.
Six years was enough to be a real girl; enough for roots, enough for friends and community. Was it? She’s not sure at all. She doesn’t know how long it takes, how much effort. She had always assumed she was born without that; too quiet, too convoluted, too brown, too awkward, too Samira to ever really learn, but built perfectly to save lives instead.
It had always seemed like entirely too much to investigate either. Certainly more than she had available to her. How could Samira be that selfish with her time? When there were lives to save? Research to do?
Her fists are clenched at her sides and she releases them by force, bringing her hands in to her chest. Her eyes stay squeezed shut.
Even worse, she’d never spared it a thought. She never even considered caring about anything other than this, but now this wasn’t right and she wasn’t right and nobody understood the first thing about her and she couldn’t breathe. Who was she without the medicine—did it even matter who she was?
“Hey— whoa, Dr. Mohan. Hey, you’re okay,” came the sudden voice, cutting sharply through the ringing in her ears and the tempest of thoughts.
Samira flinches violently, pulling herself away from the lockers. Her hands are clenched at her sides again. Her eyes are still closed. She doesn’t want to open them, but she does.
It’s Dr. Abbot. Her spine straightens, muscles pulling tight. Her hands grip each other behind her back. “Dr. Abbot. Hi,” she says, tone clipped, trying in vain to sound okay. Her cheeks are cold and when she brings a hand up, she realizes she’s been crying.
She sniffles once and Dr. Abbot startles into motion. His brows furrow and he takes several steps forward. He stops right before her, jerking his head to look around, before inching a little closer. “Let’s go somewhere more private, yeah?”
She sniffles again, nodding her head, and following him towards the nearest on-call room. She can feel the heat of him beside her and the lightest pressure on her back, leading her.
He closes the door behind them and stays near it, watching her sit on the bed with his arms crossed. When she looks back at him, he nods, taking a step forward. She watches him inch closer; it looked like he was floating closer without realizing it.
“Can you breathe for me?”
She tries for a deep breath, but finds herself shuddering instead, curling tighter into herself. He’s looking right at her, like she was a book left open, and she’s not quite sure how to feel. She looks away, staring at her knees instead.
She hears shuffling, before his legs appear in her periphery. He pauses before the mattress beside her dips and he’s sitting beside her. He’s warm, but not exaggeratedly like before. It’s comforting in a way. In another moment, a heavy hand settles on her back, petting in slow strokes.
“You’re okay, Mohan,” he says, voice low and scratchy.
“Samira,” she pleads immediately. “Please just Samira.”
The hand pauses slightly before resuming it’s petting. “You’re okay, Samira,” he corrects.
Samira releases a shuddering breath at the sound of her name. It’s more grounding than she’d expected. She was a person, she tried to remind herself. Even if her career exploded, maybe she could still be a person.
Time blurs as she tries to regain her bearings. She focuses on the heavy, warm hand that grounds her. It moves in long sweeps from her shoulders down, and repeats, untiring. She can’t bring herself to feel embarrassed, not when her grip on her sanity was tenuous at best.
“Was it a patient?”
“No. I just— I don’t know. I don’t know,” she tries to explain, but realizes that she’s not even sure what it was. Was there even one thing?
Dr. Abbot’s hand stills, coming around to her shoulder to squeeze, “take your time.”
“I don’t know who I am anymore,” she starts. “I’ve only ever been two things: a doctor and a daughter, and I’m only good at one of those things.”
Dr. Abbot makes a noise, but doesn’t interject. His hand resumes it’s soothing rhythm.
“I had a plan. I always have a plan, but my mom calls me and tells me I’m—,” her voice breaks off. “I’m not needed there anymore. As if I hadn’t planned my whole life around her.” Samira laughs bitterly, fisting her hands into her scrub pants. Who was Samira, she kept asking herself. Who was she?
“I heard about that job—”
“It doesn't matter now I guess. I only accepted the job for her,” Samira says bitterly. “And now I’m floundering and I don’t know what to do and talking to people is making it worse.”
“That’s a lot to deal with, but you always have a plan hm?”
Samira shakes her head, still looking down and away, “my plan is in tatters and I just don’t know where I belong.”
Dr. Abbot pats her back then, to get her attention. She brings her hand up to wipe her tears before looking at him. He looks right into her eyes again.
“Why don’t you apply for the medical education fellowship? Isn’t the only reason you held off because of the other job?”
He says it so flippantly, as if it were the most obvious thing. As if it weren’t the one thing she’d been waiting to hear someone say. She stares at him, uncomprehending. His mouth twitches, but he seems to force himself to look.
“There’s probably 60 applicants for that one spot,” she reasons, trying valiantly to stomp down the warm feeling in her chest.
Dr. Abbot makes a face; he rolls his eyes and purses his mouth in fond amusement. “So what. You’re by far the smartest one here and the most qualified, they’d be stupid to even consider anyone else.”
Samira stares. And stares and stares. She’s not sure what to say, not sure what to do.
“Samira?” he says after a minute, amusement wiping away, replaced with alarm. “Unless you don’t want that! I’m not trying to push you in any direction,” he rushes to reassure, eyes a little wide. He detaches from her, standing up to face her. “What do you want, Samira?”
Samira has always had the ability to see. She could see more than was convenient. She could see clearly the days where grief would pull her mom under the tide, leaving her to fend for herself. She could see the way other kids would tune her, the way they they gave her a wide berth, back before she still looked at people other than her patients. She could see everyone around her, all the time, but they were never looking back.
For the first time, in this moment—where Dr. Abbot had begun to twitch and break eye-contact, looking around the empty room for a solution—Samira felt truly seen.
“I— um. I wanted to teach, abstractly, at least,” she says, mind jumping to the idea she’d tentatively begun to form in her mind.
“My research lost it’s funding and I’ve been brainstorming ways to have an impact despite that.”
Dr. Abbot crosses his arms across his chest. “You can affect change from their very first day in the ER,” he agrees.
He ducks his head, trying to catch her eye again. “You’re the exact voice these new Doctors need to be hearing from.”
Samira watches him and despite his awkward fidgeting, his attention was squarely on her. He looks so incredibly serious that she can’t help but nod along. He nods with her, mouth twitching.
“I’ll be expecting a reference request in my inbox soon,” he says before smiling. He nods once, before turning to leave the room.
Samira’s left watching the closed door behind him. She takes a breath; in for 4, hold for 4, and out for 4. She feels her anguish leave her with the exhale, her chest feeling lighter. She could do this, she assures herself, trying to shake off the rest of her anxiety. Maybe the plan wasn’t all a waste. Maybe there was still time.