That September Day

2002-09-11 - 8:27 p.m.

I thought today I'd do one of those "where were you when the world stopped turning" sort of entries.

So where was I when it actually happened? I guess I don't actually know. I was probably somewhere on Highway 99 between Stockton and Modesto. When my alarm went off in the morning everything was normal. The radio was just playing music. I turned it off, hopped in the shower, got dressed, and grabbed a pop-tart and capri-sun for a breakfast on the road. In the car I was listening to a book on tape, "The World According to Garp" by John Irving, so I didn't hear anything on the radio. An hour later I arrived in the parking lot of the Modesto Memorial Medical Center and walked in through the hospital to the pharmacy. As I walked through the door I said cheerfully, "Good morning!" A few people looked at me, nobody answered. I was not nonplussed, the people at MMMC were basically all jerks anyway. I was doing my infectious disease rotation there and my job was to do the pharmacokinetics on all the patients in the hospital who required pk monitoring. So I made my way through the distribution area to my little half cubicle in the back which I shared with mood-swing-Karen. As I was walking I noticed that the radio was on louder than usual and it was tuned to some talk station. I sat down and flipped on the switch for my computer and as I was waiting for it to boot up, I listened to what the people on the radio were saying. Holy shit, some people flew some planes into the world trade center. Karen, who spent the largest portion of most of her days trying to hunt down the people who kept messing with her chair (which in my opinion didn't exist), was sobbing uncontrollably because she hadn't been able to get ahold of some relative or friend who lived somewhere on the east coast and she was sure they were dead. Thoughout the course of the day I'm sure she called every single person she had ever met just to make sure they were ok. I was worried about Flik. She was going to school at the Manhattan School of Music, I had no idea how close that was to the trade center. The radio blasted all day and mostly they said the same things over and over. They shut down all air traffic, including the life flights to our hospital. Finally around 4 o'clock I finished with the pk stuff and went upstairs to find the patients charts to make chart notes about my findings and make adjustments to anyone's meds that needed adjusting. My first stop was the ICU waiting room which had a TV. That was my first view of the disaster. It was breathtaking. I couldn't stay long, I had work to do. I finished up around 5:30 and headed home. Around 6:30 I plopped myself down on the couch in front of the TV. I called Flik. She was fine. In fact, she didn't even know what happened until her dad (in Cali) called her to see if she was ok and woke her up.

One year later, I got out of bed at 6, took a shower, and decided to skip breakfast entirely because traffic has been so bad since Sac State started that I've been late to work almost every day for a week. I drained my toe (yuck!) and left for work at about 7. At 7:30 I made it to the freeway. I figured there was no way I was ever going to make it on time, but traffic on the freeway was moving, even though it was heavy. I pulled into primary care's parking lot at 7:57. I slid into my chair as the meeting was starting. The meeting was boring. I struggled to keep my eyes open. Then Eliza gave her presentation on deficiency anemias. Then I waited for Princess to evaluate me. I didn't expect it to be good, but it seemed to me she had two things for me to improve on and those two things worked their way into about 10 of the 15 evaluation categories. The two things are working better with my fellow health care providers (yes, get myself out of that 8th percentile in friendliness) and apply my knowledge better. So today I made a whole bunch of new friends and I tried hard to apply my knowledge. For some reason Princess just doesn't inspire me. I know that's not an excuse, but its the truth. I have no need to impress her at all. When she asks me something I have an urge to just say, "leave me alone!" instead of answering it. And it irks me that the person who is evaluating me doesn't even know me well enough to know my name. In all of her comments she referred to me as "Resident Thompson." Geez, how many times have you signed your name next to mine? I would think she might've noticed that that's not my name. But anyway, the evaluation was a big fat "needs improvement," but at least it wasn't a "take her out back and shoot her, she's hopeless." I went to Capital and we had a 9/11 potluck complete with prayers. After that was asthma clinic. I saw 7 patients today, plus another dude looking for viagra.

I didn't leave Capital until 5:30. From the parking lot I called my dad to let him know I wouldn't be home in time to run. Plus my toe is killing me, I spent all day hobbling around on it. But anyway, I didn't do any exercise today. On the way home I heard the end of George Strait's "She'll Leave You With a Smile." One of the lines goes--well, shoot, I just downloaded and listened to that song to try to get the exact line right, and apparently that wasn't the song because that line wasn't in it. At any rate, I heard some song on the radio with a line that went, "You'll see her walking down the street with someone new," and I imagined Stretch walking down the street with another girl. I felt a very unwelcome pang of jealousy. I have no right to feel that way. I have no reason to feel that way, do I? So I forced myself to imagine it until I no longer felt that way.