The morning prayer at the hospital had always been an innocuous part of the day until one day in the middle of pre-rounds I was stopped in my tracks by my new resident team. Confused, I looked at them as they held a finger up, their eyes trained on the ceiling as they waited expectantly for the crackles of the overhead speakers to settle down.

“What are we—”

“Shhh,” they warned in synchrony. So I waited, and the morning prayer began as it did every day. The senior resident looked as if he was mumbling his own prayer, inaudible and earnest. I considered offering a silent prayer of my own since we had actually taken the moment to pause our day, as the morning prayer often requested.

Despite it being my first time seeing this particular ritual during pre-rounds, I respected his religious devotion.

Once it had finished, the intern asked, “How long?”

“About a minute. Not shabby. Key words?”

“Falls, balance—those were the main ones.”

“Must have been a bad day on the neuro floor yesterday,” the senior said with aglint in his eye.

They must have finally noted the confused expression on my face as I turned sideto side as if watching a Wimbledon match.

“So,” the intern began, “we have a theory.”

“A hypothesis, if you want to be more accurate.”

We began to walk down the hall and towards the staircase as they explained to me the conspiracy they had cooked up during their time together on the floors.

“So you’re telling me,” I said, voice echoing in the stair well. “The content of the prayer indicates yesterday’s incidents at the hospital, and the length of the prayer tells you the amount of rapid responses and codes today?”

“Precisely,” the senior said, his messy blonde hair bouncing around. “So today won’t be particularly good or bad. Now that you know, you can be prepared.”

I laughed, shaking my head, but the silly idea was already taking root in my head as we ascended.

“Why,” the intern panted as she tied her dark hair up into a bun, “are we climbing four flights of stairs? Couldn’t we just take the elevator?”

“Cardiovascular health!” The senior exclaimed, leading the crusade as we fell further behind.

“Guys, you might need to call a rapid on me,” I squeezed out between breaths.

“If I go down, I’m DNR/DNI, just leave me here,” the intern chimed in, inequally bad shape.

“Neither of you are allowed to code. While I theoretically could carry the list on my own as your senior, I’d rather not.”

At last we made it, pushing into the hall breathless and sweating, drawing the looksof the nearby nurses. “Then maybe we should take the elevator next time,” I offered, and the intern vigorously nodded her head in agreement.

The senior shook his head in mock disappointment, and we all laughed as we straightened out our white coats and checked that our stethoscopes had stayed in place during our ascent to Mount Everest.

“Alright, let’s start with your patients,” he said, nodding his head toward me.

“Let’s go,” I smiled. As serious as medicine was, it was these little conversations full of humor that made me thankful to share this work with the people around me. To be able to find joy and laughter in the every day, despite everything, lets us connect with our humanity and each other.

Shushanna Samvelian, MS4
Saint Louis University School of Medicine