Vidya had just entered hell month officially. Akin to the hell week of the Para Special Forces training in the Indian Army, hell month was the most gruelling month of internship postings. For this was the month she was posted in the roaring inferno of chaos otherwise known as the labour room posting. Vidya had been dreading these 20 days ever since she began internship, but just as one tends to do, had pushed it to some dark recess of her brain, unexamined and ignored, until the date turned into January 5th and she found her name on the next set of interns heading to the slaughterhouse. So she rolled up her sleeves (rather unwillingly, but she had not much choice in the matter) and bought herself a calendar to tick off DLTELRP or Days Left Till the End of Labour Room Posting.
Day 1 started on an ominously gloomy, rainy day. She was ten minutes late—wonderful start already! Scurrying into the tattered and ridiculously oversized excuse of labour room scrubs, taping the holes that showed up at the most inconvenient places, she rushed in and exhaled with relief when she realized that the first-day orientation had not begun yet. Following a brief introduction as useful as an air hostess’s rushed flight safety instructions, a set of four woefully unequipped interns made their way to run the floor of the busiest labour room in the state. Vidya wondered why the NFHS was getting all worked up about falling total fertility rates when all she saw was the rotating escalator of women rushing in, delivering their babies, and leaving at a speed that would put a factory assembly line to shame.
The interns were an eclectic mix of three females and one male, which meant only one thing: that they were left with an effective workforce of three interns. You see, Y-chromosomal privilege extended its umbrella even into the most female-centered department in the entire hospital. Surrounded by female registrars, female interns, female nurses, and wailing female patients in an estrogen drenched ecosystem, the odd male intern was a highly rare species, a breath of fresh testosterone, whose presence was to be stared at and revered, but never to be dragged into the mundane labour that kept the show running. It did not help that he was charming and had the gift of the gab, making him the darling of the nurses’ and registrars’ eyes. It also did not help that he had established his fragility in the face of the gory reality of the labour room by fainting at the sight of the very first delivery right in the thick of some macabre episiotomy action. Perhaps all men in the country would benefit from a tour of labour room action; it might just sensitize them to the strength and pain tolerance of even the most diminutive and weak-looking women.
The tasks allotted to the interns included inserting IV cannulas, ensuring CTG machines were securely taped and running, titrating oxytocin doses, and even conducting deliveries. The brain part of decision-making, difficult delivery supervision, and cesarean sections were the kingdom of the registrars and consultants far, far above in the hierarchy—the very crown jewels of the labour room.
The most important among the tasks assigned to the intern gang, however, was the rushing of blood. Literally and metaphorically, these blood runners, superheroes without capes, had to possess a rare mix of capabilities:
- Persuasive diplomatic aptitude to convince the sleep-deprived blood bank technician at unearthly hours to part with the 3rd odd packet of blood, with no packets being donated by the patient’s relatives in return (for the in-laws had diabetes and the husband, a well-built man, was suffering from an idiopathic weakness of some kind diagnosed by the mother-in-law, thereby making him unfit to donate blood to their emaciated daughter-in-law who had come in proudly proclaiming an Hb of 5 as a badge of extreme endurance).
- Elite running skills (reminiscent of Lord Hanuman’s journey from Lanka to the Himalayas to procure the Sanjeevani in one night right in time to revive Laxman) to cover the five hundred metres between the OR or labour room in an entirely different building to the blood bank and back before the patient bled out.
- Superhuman endurance to do the above feats at all times of the day and with empty fuel tanks if the day had been particularly busy, leaving no time to catch a bite.
Apart from delivering the all-too-important blood bags in a bloodthirsty, vampirish labour room, the intern gang were also the bringers of nourishment, playing the crucial role of midnight snack deliverer, coffee supplier, and in-house Swiggy delivery executive.
The labour room could be compared to a ticking time bomb with a faulty fuse. Silence and calm felt eerie and oddly discomforting, like the receding of the sea before a tsunami or the quiet that precedes a deadly volcano. Before anyone could blink, suddenly one was faced with a grand multipara in the waiting room, the baby threatening to pop out of her lax pelvic musculature with a mere cough, while the beds inside were a nightmarish maze of eclamptic seizures, a PPH pouring gallons of blood onto the labour room floor while her BP tanked, and a CTG reading of FHR (fetal heart rate) 80, which made the delivering obstetrician suffer a mini cardiac arrest.
The co-casualty of an exploding labour room were the gentle, docile anaesthetists who had taken a specialty that they had assumed, at the time of NEET PG, would spare them from chaos, turbulence, and patient idiosyncrasies (theirs were, after all, unconscious most of the time), until they found their heads being chewed off by a ferocious OG registrar in the middle of the night as they scrambled groggily to prepare for an emergency C-section.
As days passed, Vidya learnt the tricks of the trade. She was now adept at inserting cannulas into plump maternal veins, sans the usual bloodbath and consequent hysterical exclamations from the bystanders. She knew the exact curt tone to correct those who called her sister instead of doctor, and the velvety, pleading tone to solicit extra blood for a patient from the stingy blood bank technician. When the day ended, she found herself reeking of that unique scent that comes from a specific cocktail of blood, amniotic fluid, and meconium as she trudged back to her room to cross another day off the ordeal. For no matter how many days passed and how cute the chubby cherubs were, nothing could make her peace-loving nervous system enjoy the roller coaster that the labour room was.
Finally, the day came when they had to move on to the next posting. The hell month was officially over. Unlike the Para SF who received a maroon beret for their successful completion of hell week, the bone-tired interns received a blood-stained pair of Crocs as a rite of passage and a lifetime of irreplaceable memories—both good and nightmare-inducing. After the entire OG posting ended, the interns were invited to a feedback session on their experiences. The gentle professor asked them what they each liked about the posting. He started with Vidya; she panicked and blurted out, “Labour room.” Her batchmates gasped, the registrars smirked, Vidya herself was shocked at her perjury, while the wise and all-knowing professor just smiled in amusement: “Well, if you loved it so much, you are welcome to do another rotation with us!”
Vidya glumly bit into her samosa.