Chapter 1: ZERO
“Doctor Magenta, you’re zero.” These words kept replaying in her mind, as she cried continuously. It was nighttime now. She had always tried her best, and a lot of people admired her as well, but now when her supervisor told her such harsh and heart-wrenching words, she got very depressed and shocked. All her confidence shattered into many pieces just like a broken glass. She just couldn’t understand where had she gone wrong.
Actually it was her ward exam today in the pedes ward. She was very well prepared for her exam and was very composed just like always, brimming with loads of confidence. Of course she is always devoted towards her career and taking care of the patients, making the patients feel comfortable with her is one of the principles she has in her view of an ideal doctor, the kind of doctor she has always aspired to become. She carefully attended the patients she was assigned to for the test, treated the children and their mothers very kindly and gave them some advices of what they had to take care of. The children and their mothers were very comfortable with her. They got consolation from her.
One of them said, while looking around to check that nobody was looking at them,” Young lady, it has been such a long time since somebody talked to me in such a gentle and supporting manner. The doctors and nurses pay no attention to me or my child, the others around me are facing similar circumstances. My husband has stopped vising us, I heard that my mother-in-law is trying to get him a second wife because I bore him a sick child”, at that time, her face seemed very dark as if it were some shadow and sad. Another mother added, “I have been feeling so depressed after I gave birth to my kid. We tried for 8 years for a baby and when I finally gave birth to a baby, my husband left us saying that he wanted a son. I’ve not seen him since then and now my daughter got sick. Nothing seems to be going well in my life.” She had a severe case of untreated post-partum depression, actually a lot of women present there in the ward were facing such circumstances. “The head doctor shouts at us all the time and does not treat us kindly at all”, another complained. Magenta reassured them that their children will definitely get better, and smiled warmly at them.
She diagnosed their conditions and smoothly reported to the professor. But it seemed like the professor was not in a good mood, he started to ask unrelated questions or the dosages of the medicines that were not included in the syllabus for this test. She still tried her best to answer correctly as she had already done self study of all the syllabus but of course she hadn’t revised yet , moreover the professor kept on asking weird questions and before she could answer it he asked the next questions and finally he said, “Doctor Magenta, you are ZERO”, shattering all the confidence she had gained till now and leaving her unable to speak. It felt as if there were something strangling her neck, her breathing got heavier, she couldn’t keep her composure and a warm liquid began rolling down her cheeks and that’s when she realized that she was crying. This was her first time crying in front of others hence showing a weakness. How he had insulted her, called her incapable and made her feel like a beggar by saying that I'm just giving you passing marks but you're actually unworthy. She just couldn't forget it. She ran back to her dorm room and ran towards her bed. She buried her face in the blanket and started bawling her eyes out. she cried and cried, she didn't even eat anything and she even her throat started to hurt and her head started to hurt, she still didn't stop. Now she was in such a big shock. Near dawn, she started to feel a spark in her chest, a desire to take revenge, not the one that would hurt anybody, but the revenge was the one that would heal a lot of people. She will study extremely hard, practice a lot and become a world famous doctor in just a few years' time and then she will visit that professor and make him jealous. But it is not even necessary to come and make anybody jealous, she will mainly focus on her career. "It seemed like the professor had a fight with his fight and that's why he was taking it all out on the students, hmph...seems like he couldn't keep his personal and professional life separate. "She was very angry at him, not only because he called her null, but also because of his behavior towards the patients. Any sane person would be upset to see that. But of course right now all she could do was hard work. Now she had a burning compassion to work very hard. She remembered why she wanted to become a doctor, why she worked so hard till now and why did she bear with all the stress during her medical entrance exam days. She worked extremely hard at that time, even though she got very sick at that time, she fainted and was hospitalized, she was left behind her classmates but she still managed to get admission in the best medical college in the country. How happy she was at that time. How determined she was at that time. Remembering all that, of course she got even more determination to study even harder. She smiled with gratitude thinking how a few years ago she could not even have imagined that she could get admission in any good place, let alone a medical college, and the top one at that. She was very grateful to have found her passion. She felt very lucky, remembering how much she had improved. She placed her hand on her chest, inhaled, exhaled, repeated this a few times and decided to start working very hard after taking a sleep, because it is very important for health as well as memory formation.
