My Last Day of Medical School

Today was the last day of my medical school career. Four years of my life have gone past so quickly, almost effortlessly. Time has that affect on memory I guess, or is it the opposite? Experiences good and bad become diluted, emotions fade, wounds long past heal, attenuated and painful periods contract. And as I walked into this particular hospital one last time, time would once again leave an impression on my mind. A lasting, meaningful one? Perhaps. Only time would tell. Or would it?

Opening the stairwell door to leave the intensive care unit, a friend I had worked with for several years hurried past me in a frenzy. I stopped her to inquire as to why she was in the hospital, and she explained that her 22-year-old brother’s heart had suddenly stopped and in the next day or so they expected that he would pass away. She was a girl in her mid-twenties; a black scarf was draped over the corners of her exhausted face in the traditional Yemeni way. Her black eyeliner was freshly applied, but without that precision most girls pride themselves for. I followed her to her brother’s room, offered some contorted almost rehearsed words to comfort her mother. The mother uttered a few praises in Arabic asking God to help me succeed in life, and returned her full attention to her son. I stepped out. I almost felt ashamed that I had walked in there. I reminded her of her son; tall, dark, Arab. And she probably resented me for that. I peered into the room before leaving and saw her softly place the side of her face on her son’s chest as she wept quietly. It was too unbearable to see a mother mourn in this way. The gravity that normally permits a downward course when you walk down stairs felt unusually heavier this time as I made my way down to the hospital lobby. There was a heaviness in my heart. Instead of feeling joy for finishing medical school, my mind started to wander to thoughts of life, self, spirit, inadequacy and death. I felt like a fool—naked, exposed. I was an ungrateful punk about to start a new life in medicine without having a clue. I couldn’t help but think how time had jaded me.

I made my way to medical education and said my last goodbyes to the staff. I cleaned out my locker, turned in my badge and checked my beaten up pager one last time before giving it up. Tired, somber and somewhat relieved, I took off my soiled white coat and stuffed it in the trash bin while exiting the hospital. It had so many holes and stains that I had patched it up with white tape. It was hideous. I stepped out onto the parched asphalt, and just then a brisk rainfall poured down while the sun broke through a cluster of clouds. I never believed that all things happen for a reason. But that moment couldn’t be a coincidence.

Rain is a good omen in the Islamic tradition. It represents God’s mercy. It brings hope, new beginnings. I looked to the grey sky as droplets hit my face and recited several prayers. I asked God to bring good days my way, to strengthen me, to let time work in my favor. My mind started to rationalize and reinterpret the rain in the way it always does with obscure ideas and events. Maybe the heavens are crying for me? No, about me, and my life thus far, and my state. Maybe, just maybe, the rain abruptly stopped to signal to me that I had missed an opportunity in my yesteryears. The ample opportunities that God had provided me, from his infinite mercy that I had ignored or wasted. I opened the door of my car and plopped myself onto the leather seat. The humidity was suffocating, so I cracked the windows before driving off.

The rain passed and the streets seemed to drink up every little drop of water that had fallen. My mind continued to wonder as I drove. I had always struggled with the concept of time. I would sit down sometimes to attempt to write about it, to understand it in a vacuum, but it proved to be elusive. And today, as the sun shines through the dusty clouds, with clarity I say that it is because time is pegged to our memories and thought processes, to our actions, successes and failures. With every moment that passes, we shape and continue to reshape ourselves and we choose how time affects us. And I thought, that perhaps at some point, I had chosen a path of jadedness. Allowed time to impress on me the worst of it. I absorbed it, allowed it to seep into my being, into my eyes, my sight, my spirit.

Bint Al-Houda, a famous religious female scholar and activist tortured and killed by Saddam came to mind. All of what I had just pondered she had summed up in one utterance and took it a step further. “It shall not be that time will leave its imprint on me, but rather I shall leave my imprint on time”. How visionary, I thought. A vision that perhaps I had failed to see all these years. AH Dabaja