theatrical_muse #24: Enough Sorrow
"There's enough sorrow in the world, isn't there, without trying to invent it."
E.M.Forster, A Room With A View.
She wanted to do something good. She told herself that was why she chose to come back, to be an attending in the ER. It was to do good, to do something productive with her impulses to always do the right thing. She even joked it was simply to get it out of her system. She liked it, at first, but now she finds herself wondering if it was really such a good idea. She had painted a pretty picture in her head of healing the sick, bandaging hearts and wounds at the same time. But instead, she passes all the interesting people upstairs to diagnostics while she tends to the drunk, the high, the misfits of New Jersey. She sees a lot of crazy people, a lot of people who don’t care, and she feels sometimes like she’s slipping into one of those places, to either crazy or just not caring.
Sometimes she wishes she had never resigned, but in the same thought she reminds herself that she doesn’t regret her decision. She wanted to be with Chase, to see where things could go, to get over and away from House - she accomplished the getting away part, for a little while. But, somewhere along the way, things changed. She’d never been a big fan of New Jersey, but she found herself missing it. And once the attending job came open, she applied for it without even mentioning it to Chase - she didn’t even tell him about it until he heard a message from Cuddy on their machine.
She loved it, at first, but then she loved a lot of things at first, until the new, shiny feeling wore off. The first three weeks were great; she felt as if she was tiptoeing on eggshells, hiding from House like a game of hide-and-go seek. It was halfway through the third week that it started to get to her that he hadn’t noticed. By that time, Chase was there too and working in surgery. She didn’t mention it - even once House noticed her, she didn’t mention much about her worries over work. She instead got entirely too involved with House’s team, game, whatever they call it - which made for more bad days, with Chase and Foreman. She managed to distance herself, to just throw herself into her work, but she didn’t find it nearly as rewarding as she had hoped.
The days take forever to slip by now. She often feels more frustrated than anything else because her patients aren’t really looking for help or kindness - sure, there’s the occasional accident victim, but they just want to be sutured and cleaned up, no hugs or tearful thanks. This wasn’t the job she went to medical school for, but she doesn’t really know what else to do. She can’t leave Princeton again - not yet, anyway - but she can’t really give herself a good reason why, without bridging a gap between topics that she’d rather avoid altogether. This was the path she chose, and though she doesn’t necessarily regret it, she does find herself wondering why… to which she can only remind herself that she wanted to do something good.
E.M.Forster, A Room With A View.
She wanted to do something good. She told herself that was why she chose to come back, to be an attending in the ER. It was to do good, to do something productive with her impulses to always do the right thing. She even joked it was simply to get it out of her system. She liked it, at first, but now she finds herself wondering if it was really such a good idea. She had painted a pretty picture in her head of healing the sick, bandaging hearts and wounds at the same time. But instead, she passes all the interesting people upstairs to diagnostics while she tends to the drunk, the high, the misfits of New Jersey. She sees a lot of crazy people, a lot of people who don’t care, and she feels sometimes like she’s slipping into one of those places, to either crazy or just not caring.
Sometimes she wishes she had never resigned, but in the same thought she reminds herself that she doesn’t regret her decision. She wanted to be with Chase, to see where things could go, to get over and away from House - she accomplished the getting away part, for a little while. But, somewhere along the way, things changed. She’d never been a big fan of New Jersey, but she found herself missing it. And once the attending job came open, she applied for it without even mentioning it to Chase - she didn’t even tell him about it until he heard a message from Cuddy on their machine.
She loved it, at first, but then she loved a lot of things at first, until the new, shiny feeling wore off. The first three weeks were great; she felt as if she was tiptoeing on eggshells, hiding from House like a game of hide-and-go seek. It was halfway through the third week that it started to get to her that he hadn’t noticed. By that time, Chase was there too and working in surgery. She didn’t mention it - even once House noticed her, she didn’t mention much about her worries over work. She instead got entirely too involved with House’s team, game, whatever they call it - which made for more bad days, with Chase and Foreman. She managed to distance herself, to just throw herself into her work, but she didn’t find it nearly as rewarding as she had hoped.
The days take forever to slip by now. She often feels more frustrated than anything else because her patients aren’t really looking for help or kindness - sure, there’s the occasional accident victim, but they just want to be sutured and cleaned up, no hugs or tearful thanks. This wasn’t the job she went to medical school for, but she doesn’t really know what else to do. She can’t leave Princeton again - not yet, anyway - but she can’t really give herself a good reason why, without bridging a gap between topics that she’d rather avoid altogether. This was the path she chose, and though she doesn’t necessarily regret it, she does find herself wondering why… to which she can only remind herself that she wanted to do something good.