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Creative Nonfiction Reflection Society  4 min Mature Audience Finalist

The Chair in the Bathroom

Rachael Za.

Rachael Za.

Rachael Zacks, MD, MPH is currently the chief resident at Harvard's Occupational and Environmental Medicine Residency program. She is a proud board-certified internal medicine physician who has spent the last three years deploying to international humanitarian disasters, working with refugee and disadvantaged populations and contributing to a variety of domestic disaster response and emergency preparedness projects. She hopes to use her love of writing and storytelling to continue to share how healthcare providers and patients can work together to create a healthier world. "The Chair in the Bathroom" was originally a finalist in Short Édition's Long Story Short Award contest, 2022.

Image of Long Story Short Award - 2022
Nature is calling. As a new intern in the medical intensive care unit (MICU) my bladder is not yet trained to resist this instinctual human need. The team has been rounding for six hours, discussing the problems and plans for some of the sickest patients in the hospital. But my 6:00 a.m. green tea doesn't care that we are not close to finishing. I've got to go.The MICU is a polarizing place for many first year residents, commonly called interns. For some personalities it is the holy grail, where the critically ill patients provide opportunities for procedures aplenty. For others it is a place

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