Metrics of Worth

From the Soul on Call series
Note: These reflections are fictional and intended for educational and reflective purposes only. They are not medical advice, are not based on any specific individual, and do not represent the views of any employer or institution.

The charting alcove—affectionately known as The Pit—buzzed with its usual failing light and soft, synthetic fatigue. The air, a potent cocktail of worn upholstery, the faint ghost of a stale granola bar from last Tuesday, and the low hum of dry printer heat, clung to Solan’s jacket. The chairs, eternally conspiring against lumbar support, were a little too low. The monitors, perched just out of comfortable reach, a little too high. Everything designed by someone who clearly believed that comfort was the enemy of efficiency (and possibly joy).

Dr. Solan Call sat hunched over a terminal, jacket still on, badge twisted stubbornly sideways. It was late. Not emergency-room-level late, where minutes stretched into lifetimes. Just that quieter kind of late, the one where the only witness to your extra hour was the flickering fluorescent light—a silent conspirator in tomorrow’s inevitable exhaustion. He rubbed the persistent ache in his right shoulder, a familiar souvenir from the Pit’s ergonomic challenges.

He opened his dashboard. Not to actually do anything earth-shattering. Just to perform the digital equivalent of kicking the tires: confirm he’d spun enough plates without dropping any catastrophic ones.

Charts completed: ✅
Patients seen: ✅
Discharges within 48 hours: ✅
Critical results acknowledged: ✅
Sick days used: 0 (hero bonus points: still negative)
Vacation days used: 0 (clearly maximizing “endurance”)
Wellness check-in: ⚠️ Overdue (who has time for wellness when there are metrics to meet?)
Non-billable hours: ↑ (the silent scream of good intentions)

He stared at the screen. The numbers didn’t judge him, exactly. They just existed in their pristine digital vacuum, offering neither praise nor condemnation. Cool, clean, precise. Like a particularly unflattering mirror that showed everything about the room around you, but somehow erased your own reflection.

Earlier that afternoon, Max Stats—a man whose enthusiasm peaked with spreadsheet optimization—had materialized in the alcove, practically radiating the glow of well-sorted data.

“You’re trending beautifully,” Max had announced, brandishing a printout like a winning lottery ticket.
“Top quintile for throughput, and you’ve optimized note lag by 23% since Q1. Stunning work, Solan!”

Solan had nodded, offered a bland “Thanks,” the internal equivalent of a polite cough. He’d omitted the part where he felt like he was slowly being algorithmically digested.

He scrolled further down the endless digital scroll. One line, blinking with the passive aggression of an unaddressed task, caught his eye.

Weekend coverage – unclaimed hours: Manually adjust?

He clicked yes. The row vanished with a digital sigh of relief.

It was nothing. Truly. A microscopic housekeeping chore in the grand scheme of things.

But it felt strangely like deleting evidence that he’d ever occupied that space, those hours. As if his presence was only valid if it generated billable units.

He sat back, the chair protesting with a low groan that echoed his own inner monologue. Let the silence settle, punctuated only by the faint hum of the ventilation system and the distant, muffled page for a code team somewhere in the labyrinthine hospital. No urgent alerts. No insistent beeps demanding immediate attention. Just the soft, almost imperceptible friction of a self quietly dissolving in the fluorescent glare.

He opened a blank note. Pure white digital canvas. No formatting. No billing codes lurking in the dropdown menus.

And typed:

“I asked how she was sleeping. She admitted it was mostly in panicked, two-hour shifts.”
“He told me about his daughter’s elaborate wedding plans, even though it had zero bearing on his potassium levels. I listened anyway.”
“I didn’t interrupt when she trailed off, staring at the ceiling, searching for a memory.”
“I waited until the tremor in his voice subsided and the single tear track on his cheek dried before excusing myself.”

No one in administration would ever see this. It wouldn’t populate a performance review. There was no neatly labeled field for “stayed present while another human being experienced the messy reality of existence.”

But the words on the screen felt… real. Tangible in a way that “optimized note lag” never could. Less like sterile documentation. More like… remembering.

He leaned back, the chair groaning again, as if in weary agreement. His eyes burned with that familiar ache—not from the salt of unshed tears, but from the sheer, relentless effort of being consistently, exhaustingly useful.

He used to operate under the naive assumption that worth was a quantifiable metric, something diligently earned through sheer output. That if he just worked hard enough, showed up enough times, and produced enough billable outcomes, someone—the system, his superiors, some cosmic auditor of effort—would finally notice and validate his existence.

But lately, a more unsettling thought had begun to germinate in the quiet corners of his mind: What if the system did notice… and simply didn’t give a damn? And what if he had inadvertently constructed his entire professional identity on that shaky foundation of external validation?

He didn’t have a definitive answer, just a gnawing sense of unease.

But he saved the note.
Not because it contributed to his metrics.
Because, in some fundamental way he couldn't quite articulate, it mattered.

🌱 When the numbers go quiet, it's often in those pauses that we find ourselves. This week's Soul Kit, The Self Beyond the Metrics, is a guide for those moments.

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