A Surgeon in training witnesses Christmas
It is wet and cold this morning and I am nursing a headache. Seasonal allergies and flu are rampant this time of year and I am no exception. Going through the routine of my medications, I am uncomfortably reminded of the adage "Physician, heal thyself", and as I get some temporary relief from my symptoms, I head out into the rain to head to work. It might be Christmas today, but I find the festive spirit hard to come by. Rain and sludge under my boots mean that I have to very careful while walking and the cold mist settles in my stubborn beard. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the windowpane of a restaurant and I shudder at the unruly, almost disheveled man in the reflection. I take note that it is the holiday season, after all, and there is no barber in the city who will work today, or indeed in the coming few days. The festive spirit has descended on the city with irregular work hours for the regular citizens, but for me, I have extended work hours and overnight Emergency duty. The rain is overbearing and I am reminded of the winters I spent in Pleven, their desolate distance from me now forgotten. For a moment, no doubt triggered by my own physical state, I think that I am in Pleven, hurrying towards a destination I can't recall. There is no fever now, I remind myself, and this momentary euphoria is likely the side effect of the medical concoction I am on.
Forcing myself to stop, I reorient myself. The forest around me seems thicker than last I recal and the shrine in the distance has a light on. The lone light bulb is a pleasant sight as I take in the air, perfumed with the smell of wet earth and pine. It is reinvigorating, maybe the only antidote I need. As oxygen negotiates its way into my bloodstream, I feel like I have woken up. I know I have patients to see, and they are those who have no choice but to see me, today, because of no fault of their own. Lacking the imagination to spend my holidays in any other way than in the company of my work, I move forward. The longing for a different life is Maya, a distraction from my true purpose. Reinforcing myself with this wisdom from my Hindu roots, I am reinvigorated. The Shrine reminds me of an oasis and in these times, I take refuge wherever I can.
It is later, when I have seen my patients and I am ready to leave for home when I notice an icon of Mother Mary in my office. Cradling her infant in her arms, she looks serenely at the viewer. An old icon painter had gifted this to the department a few years ago, it was his last work as he had begun to lose his eyesight to diabetes. Unable to gaze upon his own work, I decided that I would admire it for him, because it struck me as a last labour of love for his own work. He had given this gift to the world, that on a difficult Christmas day, a surgeon working alone, far from his own home, would find some determination in the divinity of a faith that wasn't his but also not alien to him.