We are delighted to welcome budding writers from The Lady Byron School in Fleckney to the Speak Out team.
Climbing the ladder to becoming a doctor is hard. I would know. And even if you do end up graduating Medical School, 9 times out of 10 you don’t end up becoming the Meredith Grey-esque person 12-year-old you dreamed of being. Most of the time, you end up cleaning vomit off the floors, and at most, injecting a needle of some soup-like consistency into the arms of a braindead patient who’s been in a coma for 2 years, yet their family is still persisting that they stay in the hospital, clinging onto a grain of hope that they will wake up.
However, what I experienced was far from normal, but not in a good way. In fact, it made me wish that I was simply helping an old woman go down the stairs to the hospital canteen.
It was about two months ago. I’d finished the tiring experience that is medical school and was ready to put my knowledge into use. So, reaching for the laptop on the coffee table, I began to search for hospitals needing interns.
I live in the middle of nowhere, so I had virtually no options except for one application for a hospital about 10 minutes from my apartment, so I decided to fill out the form. It started with standard questions, such as my name, and when I’d graduated, etcetera, etcetera, but it was on the 4th question that I began to question the legitimacy of this hospital. Why would they need to know if I was scared of ghosts? And for what reason did they need to know my daily garlic consumption? The more questions I answered, the more skeptical I became. I filled it in anyway, as I had no other options, but I knew I was most likely not going to get a response.
I was surprised when a few hours later, an email came in from the hospital saying I’d got the job, and that I can go there tomorrow for my first day working. I should have found it weird that it had only taken a few hours to get a response, and that I was supposed to start working there tomorrow, however I was so caught up in my excitement, I wasn’t in the right mindset to question anything.
When I arrived at the hospital the next day, I spent 5 minutes simply observing the exterior of the building. It was small, with only a few rooms visible in the windows, and limestone-tinted bricks, with a singular ambulance parked outside.
When I arrived inside, I was greeted by a man with gelled-back hair, and a suit. He introduced himself as Dr Woods, the head doctor. I could’ve sworn that a lamp on a table behind him flickered on and off by itself, however, at the time, I brushed it off. He led me down a corridor, into a room. Inside, there were people who I presumed were other doctors. The people who caught my eye were someone with wavy, blonde hair, a short, red-haired person with blue eyes, a taller, more serious looking man holding the red-haired person’s hand, someone with a ponytail dyed with cyan ends, someone who looked a lot like a vampire, and someone who I thought was dressed as a plague doctor, but later found out wasn’t a costume.
Just a few seconds after I met my new colleagues, Dr Woods’ voice chimed out on the intercom.
“Attention, staff. We have our first case for today. Patient reports having disturbing memories of a horror movie and would like to request a brain transplant.”
