So the recipe I’d like to share with you is one which is hopefully relatively painless, in both the somatic and mental sense. The crowning achievement of all of my Emergency term was cooking the following pie – a pastry with a deep mature chocolate base and hints of marzipan, studded with soft pears that cut through the richness. Ohhh baby, believe me it’s good, and what’s more, I can shortcut my way around the original Jamie recipe and have on the table without so much as a bead of sweat. Go here: http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/dessert/chocolate_and_pear_tart for the original recipe, but if you want to save yourself a lot of hassle, I highly recommend being lazy like me (no one will know). The pic below is from Jamie’s website, but mine looked even better.

Chocolate and Pear Tart

serves 6 or more
• a frozen tart shortcrust shell (about $3 at my IGA – stuff making my own pastry)
• 125g ground almonds
• 2 large eggs
• 125g butter, softened (chuck for 20 seconds in the microwave or melt with the chocolate)
• 95g sugar
• 185g dark chocolate, melted*
• large tin of pears in natural syrup
• Jamie suggests “crème fraîche” (whatever), I say cream would be perfect

Preheat the oven to 190°C or to whatever the instructions are on the frozen tart shell packet. Bake the pastry for around 10 minutes in the preheated oven as per instructions, then remove, set aside, and reduce the oven temperature to 170°C.

Chuck the almonds, eggs, butter and sugar into the melted chocolate while it’s still warm and stir until smooth. Pour the mixture evenly into the pastry case and then press the pears into the pie in some kind of nice-looking arrangement.

Bake the tart for 45 minutes until the pastry is golden brown and the chocolate and almond mixture is firm. Serve warm with crème fraîche or softly whipped cream.

Ridiculously easy.

*I like to put the chocolate and butter in the microwave on high for 1 min, then stir, then repeat for 30 second intervals, being careful not to burn it. I seem to have a knack for burning things, including myself.

Emergency
I think I’m falling apart
Emergency
I think I am losing the fight
And I don’t know if I can do it
I don’t know if I can try

To get the full effect, one must sing it Rock God style: e-MERRRRRRR-gen-cee!

Other than the fact that I detest, in principle, the Eskimo album from which it originates – who the hell puts nearly the entire album in D minor? – I toy with the idea of bursting out into song in front of patients, particularly when they come in with the following true and individual complaints that I’d like to share with you all, if only to remind us of the absurdity of the human race:

• “I took an ecstasy tablet 7 hours ago, and now I’m anxious”
• “My arm felt heavy”
• “I’ve never seen my 19yo daughter like this, is this normal? …btw, she’s had 15 vodka shooters tonight”
• “I’ve got urinary retention…er yes, I did go to the toilet half an hour ago”
• “My nephew’s knee needs to be drained! You can’t refuse us treatment!” (knee obviously does not need emergency treatment)
• “I couldn’t sleep because my heart races…which I’ve had for 3 months” (How is this an emergency?)
• “I called the ambulance because…well, I have bunions”
• “I have pins and needles, then they take over my head and I can’t think!”
• “I want to see the psych nurse. NOW.” Patient has breath alcohol at least 3 times legal limit
• “Please, doctor, will you help me”…what a superfluous comment, do they think that asking me will miraculously change my mind? Did they think I was going to do shit-all in the first place?

…and mentions to all the ungrateful, intoxicated, self-righteous idiots +/- their relatives who make it all worthwhile that I owe a >$36000 debt to the government.

Due to a nasty twist of fate, probably contrived against me (c’mon I-Chucked-A-Sickie-For-Four-Nights-Intern, call me up and prove me wrong, I still have hope that maybe you are truly on your deathbed and not just holidaying overseas?) I had to do more than my share of nights and am feeling a tad-ish bitter.

I suppose I should mention that Emergency was actually a well-supported term, I had great teachers, I got a lot of baking done, I finally overcame my inability to take blood, blah blah blah, fuck it, I’m dead tired and am certainly looking forward to a weekend filled with bike rides, gardening, reading, eating and generally making the Pain Go the Fuck Away.

Well, it could’ve been worse. I could’ve been at Charlie’s, haha.

Thong’s fellow postings gave me cause to re-visit the days long gone, where afternoons would last forever and everyone one had a Best Friend, perhaps even up to 3 at any given time. My childhood BF, the one I was most in cahoots with at primary school, is a girl I haven’t heard of or seen for, what, 10 or more years. I have no desire whatsoever to change that.

She joined our class mid-way through primary school; I have no idea where she came from but everyone, including me, thought she was a bit on the strange side, as kids introduced to something new tend to think. Over time I began to see her as cool. She was one of the best dressed 10-12 year olds I ever knew. I was envious of her self-assured ways, her hipness, and of her family that seemed to actually like each other. She had an endless supply of cute and cuddly mammalian/avian creatures in her house to play with, including little puppies not yet old enough to open their eyes, and a budgie that would nibble at ears. (I had a Krazy Krab – let me tell you, there is nothing “krazy” about them) She even lived next door to the guy I had a crush on. For a long time I felt I didn’t deserve her as a BF, and I even fancied she was…near perfect.

We went to PEAC together, that class for overachievers, and took extra long getting McDonald’s thickshakes and returning back to school to avoid as much class as possible. We both dreamt of being exotic and mysterious secret agents, writing elaborately coded messages in class to each other. One day we made a Ouija board and I even gave her the benefit of the doubt when she was obviously pushing the glass around. We played Monkey Island together. We baked, mostly out of packets, and with differing and usually disastrous results. She introduced me to hours of watching Agents Mulder and Scully saving the world from alien beings and shape-shifting monsters. Our afternoons were spent making bookmarks, eating instant noodles, distilling our own perfume which incidentally, turned out to be dirty water and backyard roses. She managed to take me aside and tell me with a straight face what a condom was when boys in my class started referring to them. On our graduation night, she wore a dark blue satin halter dress and looked incredible.

When we left primary school, she went to the local public high school as I found myself dressed in the least flattering garb imaginable for my new private girls’ school. She wrote me long letters decorated with Texta about nothing in particular, and I reciprocated until both of us found new friends and moved on. I’m not sure I ever knew her, and I certainly have no idea who she is now. She could be anything, could be anywhere – a scientist in Holland, a volunteer worker in Egypt, maybe she even lives 2 streets away from me and catches my bus. When do friendships mean something? Am I likely to look back on most of my friendships and wonder how true a connection existed?

…

Arise, awake! The moon has stripped
her steely robes to be dethroned
by the bright might of sun. Through
fogged windows, a sliver of day slipped
in to christen his sleeping head. Others bemoaned
the morning but he packs his bag, finds his shoe,

Locks the front door, makes his usual way
into the weariness of the world. Despite
the weariness of the world. People wait
for him and his attentions plus/minus delay,
some with song in their eyes, some with light
in their footsteps; others with weight

in their hearts, and ailments many more
to mention. At times it is relentless, at times
there is breeze and quietness but these
moments drift like dandelion seeds – poor
to the catch. As the last bell chimes, his ears
echo, knowing that the chimes do not cease

Until time itself suspends. He returns back to
the resting place with heavy bones and tired arms.
Can it be bedtime already? Where has the hour
gone, where have the moments run off track,
Why has sun retreated to sunken position? Alarms
Are set for what is to follow, the dour

Smell of impending future returns to the air.
Perhaps with eyes closed the night will
follow suit. As the clocks go tick,
The fridge hums, the floor tiles bare
their coldness, the wind draws to a still.
And he falls asleep…dreaming of music.

His voice carries me across dark ocean waves and to where night’s depths breathe.

He releases lullabies sweetened with an aching caress, yet tells cautionary tales for young lovers.

He sings songs of beauty and desire, of loss and emancipation. He speaks of grief that is my own, deep enough to drown in, liquid enough to weep.

As he groans my heart drops an octave-and-a-third below.

He is visionary, poet and healer. Without fermata, without coda.

One of night shift’s terrible idiosyncrasies is the drive home although I’m no stranger to driving tired. The stretch to Joondalup to Como is just one long, straight, boring, and most importantly, high-speed trip along the freeway. I’ve caught myself clocking up to 120km/hr, sometimes without consciously putting down the pedal – and I’m generally fairly law-abiding when it comes to traffic regulations (unless there’s parking involved, most notably of the parallel variety). It’s a predictable sequence of events. I stop checking my rear view mirror. My eyelids feel heavy. The amount of pressure I put on the accelerator waxes and wanes. If I’m really sleepy I find myself surprised when I realise where I am. I can’t recall the last 2km I’ve travelled or the road signs I’ve past. I might momentarily close my eyes at traffic lights. And if I’m really, really exhausted, I start picturing myself veering off to the side and clipping another car; I start musing on what might happen if I were to speed headfirst into a lamp-pole. Soft tired thoughts start lapping at my strained consciousness like gentle waves on a beach – what if I crashed? Would it be quick? Would there be much pain? And when I’ve reached critical point – would it really matter?

Then I pull into my driveway and stumble out of the car, shaken by the nightmare that I was so in danger of succumbing to; awash with the relief of being able to sleep, and nothing more.

I wonder how much more time I spend pining rather than dreaming. The two may seem slightly interchangeable but one represents the impossibility of recapturing the past, whereas the other represents a possibility waiting to happen. How often is it that I try and describe or articulate an intense happy memory, only to find that the descriptive details are lost and all I can recall is the thought and the emotion. So many sweet, encapsulated moments of life – beach fishing against a pink-hued sky; biting into a deliciously delicate choux pastry chocolate eclair; a warm, salty embrace; the set of gloriously house-shaking piano chords – enough to make my heart sing, but at the expense of me forever chasing the experience, and with a bitterness if the moment cannot be replicated.

How often we wish for a tailwind, only to get stuck in a headwind.

However, when all is said and done, there is still a deep and profound frustration at myself for not being more motivated, more fearless, well, just more. I can say with a certain amount of certainty that I will always be a suboptimal doctor. That I will for most of the time, if not all, feel like a fraud.

In psych, it is becoming so plainly obvious in how I let myself project and countertransfer onto my patients. If at best I am going to be a passable healthcare provider, I should at least be passable to all the patients consistently, and not just to the ones I deem fit. The ones that suffer most in my care are the antisocials (I see them as having an inability to empathise; threatening), those ambivalent about staying on the ward (dependent), those with a distasteful forensic history eg. rapists/assaulters/paedophiles (lack of respect for fellow humans), thought-disordered (incomprehensible, suspected fraud) and the somatisers (just creating a whole lot of work). Whereas I put in the extra yard to advocate for the pleasant non-threatening ones. It’s a large mouthful of pride and prejudice (haha) to swallow when I have to, under the blanket of duty of care, put my hands on someone’s belly to gently palpate their organs when my core self screams in disgust and revulsion.

On a different note, Happy V Day to you all – I trust you all enjoyed this little paganistic ritual, and hope that no-one’s day was overshadowed by disappointment, as seems to be the default emotion, haha. Good luck in your search for true love, in whatever person or form you should happen to discover it in!

Ward Cover.

Every week-and-a-half the monkeys at HR put me down to cover the licorice all-sorts of geriatrics, psych, haematology, oncology and medical outliers. That day happens to fall on today, the entire Sunday. I must be getting paid double time or something, but afterwards I’m sure I’ll be drinking twice as much.

I’ve been treating my pager like the evil diseased harbinger of doom that it is. Every time it buzzes, my instinctive reaction is either to look down at my hip where it rests and yell “Fuck off, fuck OFF” or to stop myself from picking it up and hurling it at the nearest hard surface. They totally BS-ed us: “oh don’t worry, there’s always help around, everyone’s supportive” but no-one has a clue, most of all me, about what the hell is going on. This isn’t normal. It’s not comforting to feel like every next pager call is going to ruin your life (or someone else’s). I’m so sick of being scared sick. It’s just pure, nauseating, heart-hammering terror.

The protective factors against insanity I’ve identified (man, too much time on the psych ward) are the following:

• Taking the bike on my shift. Who the hell thinks it’s reasonable to walk from E block to C block for a medication write-up?
• I made some laksa. O bowlful of happiness.
• My Isabelle Carmody book – I don’t care if she is the Lit Queen of juvenile teenage private school girls.

I need help. And something stronger than paracetamol.

Where o where has all my spare time gone? After laundry, ironing, unpacking, grocery shopping and cooking, there just doesn’t seem enough hours in the day to do whatever it was I was supposed to do to fulfil my inner couch potato. I’m becoming a (gag) domestique. Feminists everywhere pour upon me your scorn and disgust!

Others disagree however. One biological parent today sent me the following cryptive SMS for no apparent reason:

“Tell T that I’ve fixed the computer. Btw, rhubarb leaves are poison.”

Btw, rhubarb leaves are poison??? Could he BE any more random? I had to re-read the message 3 times to make sure I wasn’t imagining it. And just to clarify, I am not generally known as girl-who-lives-on-staple-diet-of-leafy-rhubarb (c’mon, cut me some slack here), nor do I think my IGA actually sells rhubarb leaves. This message wasn’t the end-point of a conversation revolving around vegetarian dishes. No, this is the random, paranoid way in which Parent thinks, and believes it is his fatherly duty to warn me of such evils running rife in the world. He probably imagines me walking around ditzily in a fog, wandering on to the paths of oncoming traffic and incomplete roadworks.

And if you think THAT is weird…most parents on Day of Move like to give their offspring timeless advice eg. “Now that you’re independent…” etc. What does mine say as I step out of the house? “Buy the green labled salt. It has iodine.”

Most strange personality traits can be traced back to some genetic component, obviously.