_____.

Naturally, Alyssa and Connie are already waiting in the resident lounge when I show up. And what they're doing makes me ill: they're comparing diamonds.

No wonder Alyssa and Connie act like they're BFFs. They're both engaged. They can bond by talking about the fabulous weddings they're planning. Chicken or fish. Color schemes. Flowers. DJ vs. live band. The conversation topics are probably endless.

"Hi," I say as I walk in.

Alyssa barely glances up at me. "The diamond belonged to his mother," she's saying. "But we changed the setting. And I wanted platinum, of course."

"Of course!" Connie agrees.

Of course.

They spend the next five minutes talking in diamond jargon while I sit on the couch across from them and twiddle my thumbs. I suspect we would have spent the next 30 hours talking about diamonds, except then Alyssa's pager goes off. Her pager alert is the happy birthday song. Way to spoil every birthday I'll ever have, Alyssa.

"It's the ER with a new admission," Alyssa reports. She looks at me. "You're up, Jane."

"Goody!" Did I say that out loud? Alyssa looks at me funny.

Alyssa whips out an index card and takes notes as she says "uh huh" over and over again into the phone. She hangs up a minute later, and she's already glaring at me.

"I said you were up next," she says.

I just stare at her blankly.

She points her pen in my direction. "Why weren't you writing down information about the patient?"

"Because..." I feel like this answer is too obvious, that there's a trick that I'm missing. "They were talking to you on the phone. I couldn't hear them. So I couldn't write it down. That's why."

"And there's no other way you could have gotten the information, huh?" Alyssa waves her index card in my face. "No other way you could think of?"

"Um," I say. Did she really expect me to read her handwriting upside-down from three feet away?

"In the future," Alyssa says, "I expect you to copy down the information as I'm writing it. That way, we don't waste time."

"Time that could be better spent discussing diamond ring settings?" I say. No, I don't really say that. But I think it so vehemently that I'm sure Alyssa must be able to somehow hear it.

My first admission of the day is a Russian gentleman named Mikhail Petrovich. He is having chest pain. At least, we think he is. Nobody has yet located an interpreter. But apparently, he's clutching his chest and looking short of breath. So either he's having chest pain or he's just incredibly surprised.

This is my very first time in the ER, but it's hard to miss since the first floor of the hospital is plastered with arrows directing me there. It's apparently a busy day for the ER, because there are patients camped out in the hallway in stretchers, although many of them look like they're "sleeping it off." The stench of alcohol (not the rubbing kind) and old socks assaults my nostrils, and I start breathing through my mouth.

This place is a total pit.

As I'm slinking down the hallway, a guy lying on a stretcher grabs my elbow. I look down and see his fingernails are embedded with dirt. So are the creases on his face, actually.

"Are you a nurse?" he asks me.

I shake my head. "No."

He is undeterred by my response. "Do you work here?"

"Yes," I admit after a brief hesitation.

"Can I have some Percocet?" He offers me a hopeful smile.

"Let me find your nurse," I mumble, despite the fact that I have absolutely no intention of doing so. I detach his hand from my arm and see he's left behind a big dirty handprint on my fresh white coat. As I try to brush off the dirt, a stretcher nearly runs me down.

The high level of activity in the ER does not bode well for us, since we get our admissions from the ER. Busy ER = busy residents on call. So I better get a move on. I dodge a second stretcher rushing past me and attempt to locate Room 6, where Mr. Petrovich has taken residence.

I find Room 1 all right. Then Room 2. Then Room 3, 4, 5... and then the next room is Room 7. Is this some kind of sick joke?

I lift my eyes, scanning the room for someone who doesn't look like they're rushing to save someone's life. A nurse pushes past me with a full bag of dark red blood. At least I hope it's blood. Anyway, best to let her do her job.

My eyes finally settle on a familiar face: Sexy Surgeon! He's talking to a young woman in scrubs. As I approach them, I notice the woman is cowering a bit, and I can tell why: Sexy Surgeon is screaming at her.

"You're completely wasting my time, you realize that?" he snaps at her, his blue eyes flashing. "This is obviously a non-surgical abdomen. If you'd bothered to get a CT before you called me, you'd have been able to figure that out on your own. I mean, is everyone who works down here completely incapable of practicing basic medicine?"

Holy crap. Sexy Surgeon is a complete asshole. Well, I guess that isn't too huge a surprise.

I try to slink away, but it's too late. He's spotted me. I freeze, but apparently he's not a T-Rex whose vision is based on movement.

"Medicine Intern!" he cries out. He actually looks pleased. The woman in scrubs takes this opportunity to slip away from him. She owes me big time. "What are you doing here?"

"An admission," I mumble.

"Is this your first ER admission?" He grins at me. "That is really cute."

"Thanks." I roll my eyes. "Listen, you don't... know where Room 6 is, do you?"

"Ah," he says. "The elusive Room 6. Oh, yes."

I can see a glint in his blue eyes. He's enjoying toying with me like this. I wonder if he finds one medicine intern to pick on every year.

"You see that crash cart over there?" he says, pointing to the cart stocked with supplies in case of the inevitable ER Code Blue.

"Yes..."

As he extends his arm, I can see the muscles popping out. Sexy Surgeon's got himself some nice biceps. But I'm not going to think about that. "Make a left at the crash cart, then it's at the end of that hallway."

"Thank you," I say.

"My pleasure, Medicine Intern," he says.

He may be cute, but if he calls me that one more time, I swear I'll punch him in the face.

_____.

Nearly half an hour later, I am no closer to getting a history on Mr. Petrovich. Mr. Petrovich is a disheveled man in his sixties, with tufts of gray hair protruding from his skull and his chest. He keeps moaning and clutching his chest. Whenever I try to ask him a question, hoping he's magically become proficient in English, he always answers the same way: "Nyet!"

I hate County Hospital.

I'm on the verge of tears when a man comes in with a big ID badge that says "Russian Interpreter" and declares his name to be Boris.

"Thank God you're here," I say.

"You may begin, Miss," Boris says in heavily accented English.

I don't bother to correct him by telling him that I'm Doctor McGill. Instead, I say, "Can you ask him where he feels pain?"

There's an exchange of Russian between Boris and my patient. I thought I asked a pretty simple question, but I swear they go back and forth like five times. "Nyet!" I hear Mr. Petrovich say.

"What did he say?" I ask.

"He said it's on the left side of his chest."

Five minutes of discussion for that answer? "And does it radiate into his arm?"

Another long exchange in Russian follows. At this rate, it's going to take me five hours to get a history on this man.

Boris hesitates. "To be honest, it's a little hard to understand him. I think he's speaking an unusual dialect. Also, he's mumbling a lot."

Mr. Petrovich is probably difficult to understand because he's edentulous, which means he has little to no teeth-where his teeth used to be, there are only gaping red holes. In medicine, we've got all sorts of fancy words for things that aren't very pleasant to say in plain English: Emesis: Puke Epistaxis: Nosebleed Stool: Poop Dyschezia: Hurts to poop Hematochezia: Blood in poop Boris and Mr. Petrovich converse for another few minutes while I stand there on the brink of tears. "Nyet!" I hear Mr. Petrovich say.

"What did he say?" I ask.

Boris at least has the decency to look apologetic. "He says his chest hurts."

"Great."

Hours awake: 5 Chance of quitting: 52%

Chapter 7.

An hour later, I've ordered the golden work-up for Mr. Petrovich. He's being admitted to our service to rule out a heart attack, and if he's not actively infarcting his heart, he'll get a stress test in the morning. I have no idea how they're going to explain to him what to do on the treadmill, but that's their problem.

I page Alyssa to go over the patient with me. She says she's back in the resident lounge, and I have to wonder if she's been there the whole time with Connie, discussing wedding rings. It's probably bad form to ask.

On my way to the lounge, I get a page and my stomach sinks. As part of my overnight call, I'm cross-covering the whole hospital. That means that if there's any problem with any patient in the hospital, I'm the gal who's supposed to solve it. It's kind of cool. And by "cool," I obviously mean it's completely terrifying and I want to curl up in a corner and hide under a big pile of coats.

There's a phone in the resident lounge, so I figure I can call back from there. I see Alyssa inside, sitting on the couch, waiting for me. Her legs and arms are both crossed.

"I have to return a page," I explain.

She nods. I've already displeased her.

I dial the number on my pager. "Hello, this is 'Doctor' McGill," I say.

I really need to stop doing those scare quotes.

"Hello, 'Doctor.' This is Jill on 3-South. I'm calling about the patient in Room 321A, Mr. Benson."

"Oh," I say. I did get a sign-out on this patient, which I stuffed in my pocket. I pull out a bunch of papers from my pocket and start rifling through them. "What's the problem?"

"We just checked his blood sugar," Jill says. "And it's 59."

"Oh," I say.

"What would you like to do, 'Doctor'?" Jill asks me.

"Um..." I look up at Alyssa, who is actively glaring at me right now. "Could we give him some orange juice?"

"He's NPO for a biopsy," Jill explains.

NPO means nothing by mouth. It's probably another Latin thing. Anyway, how do you give a guy sugar if he can't take anything by mouth? Maybe I could give him some in the IV. But the guy's diabetic so I don't want to give him too much and send him into a diabetic coma.

"Hang on," I say to Jill. I cover the receiver of the phone and look up at Alyssa. "Um, this patient has a blood sugar of 59 but he's NPO. What should I do?"

Alyssa sighs really loudly. "You can give him one amp of D50."

I report this back to Jill, who probably knew what to do all along, then we hang up. I try to smile at Alyssa, who isn't having any of it. She gets out an index card and prepares to take notes.

"What are you waiting for?" she asks me.

"Sorry," I say. I clear my throat. "Mr. Petrovich is a 67-year-old man who..."

My pager goes off again.

Alyssa looks so unbelievably angry. Seriously, this is not my fault! I'm getting paged. How can I help it? This is part of my freaking job. I pick up the phone, swearing to myself that I'm at least going to sound like a real doctor this time. No scare quotes.

"Hello, this is 'Doctor' McGill."

Damn it!

"Hello, 'Doctor.' This is Marielle on 4-North. Mrs. Richardson was started on an ADA diet but no calories were specified."

I stare at the phone. "A... what? ADA?"

"A diabetic diet, 'Doctor,'" Marielle clarifies.

"Oh." Crap. I look up at Alyssa. I can see a vein starting to pulse in her large forehead. I'm probably going to give her stroke tonight. And I won't even know what to do, because I'm apparently completely incompetent. I brace myself. "Alyssa, this patient was put on an ADA diet, but they need to know how many calories."