What Would I Choose Now?

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

The weekend team had six patients and three attendings.

Which meant no one could find anything.

Solan had checked the third-floor lounge, the sixth-floor lounge, and the lounge marked “Staff Only” where a very confident intern was asleep under a newspaper.

He eventually found Dr. Priya Dosey in the hallway near Oncology, crouched beside a vending machine.

She was holding up a snack-size SunChips bag like it was a clinical teaching tool.

Priya: “Do you know how many milligrams of sodium are in this?”
Solan: “I’m scared to ask.”
Priya: “Three hundred and thirty. For this. Might as well mainline a saline flush.”
Solan: “The cafeteria’s closed. I was seriously eyeing a tongue depressor.”
Priya: “I’m on call for antimicrobial stewardship. This is my enrichment activity.”

She stood and joined him, SunChips in pocket like a contraband formulary. Solan led her toward the one patient who still needed a review—slow pacing, no real chaos.

They passed a learner workroom on the way.

Inside, a few med students were debriefing a recent ethics case with one of the GIM staff. On the whiteboard, someone had scrawled in red marker:
“Why did I want this job in the first place?”

Solan stopped for a moment, reading it. He felt something shift. Not pain exactly—just pressure. Like the return of a memory he hadn’t realized he’d stored in a drawer marked “irrelevant.”

The sound of Dr. Dosey chewing brought him back.

Priya: “Flashbacks?”
Solan: “I wrote something like that in med school. On a values card we filled out. Mine said: ‘To alleviate suffering. To communicate truthfully. To create.’”
Priya: “You remember it word for word?”
Solan: “Found it again last week. Tucked in an old credentials file. Next to a CPR card that expired during Obama’s first term.”
Priya: “So? Still true?”
Solan: “I don’t know. Maybe. But I mostly write clinical notes now. None of them alleviate anything. And I haven’t ‘created’ unless you count acronyms.”
Priya: “We all drift. The trick is noticing before you end up writing 3,000 discharge summaries and calling it a career.”

They walked the rest of the way in silence.

Later that evening, Solan sat at his desk with his laptop open. The house was quiet. The dog snored under the chair. He stared at the blinking cursor of a new Word doc—untitled, empty.

He wasn’t sure what he meant to write. He only knew he didn’t want it to be a progress note.

He tapped a few words. Deleted them. Tried again.

It wasn’t poetry. It wasn’t revelation. Just a memory from residency. The time he almost switched to culinary school.

He could still remember the smell of onions on his hands. The feeling of having made something you could touch, taste.

Solan wasn’t quitting medicine. He wasn’t reinventing himself. He was just letting one dormant part breathe.

For the first time in a long while, he felt—if not at peace, then slightly less edited.

He didn’t write for long. But he saved the file. Named it something embarrassing and unsearchable.

Then he closed the laptop.

And for once, he didn’t check his inbox afterward.

When your notes are fluent but your wants are quiet…
When you’re competent enough to drift for years…
What would you choose now?

🌱 Competent enough to drift for years?

This week’s Soul Kit might help.

The Values You Forgot to Update
Just a gentle return to what still matters—if you let it speak.

🔒 Available through email subscription.