Night shift

The envelope

My salary as a resident-doctor is a little more than 2,000 som a month. Some people call it good. A nurse next to me gets 1,500 and she works harder than me, and she knows more, and she is the one who finds the vein on a frightened grandfather in the first try. So I do not complain loudly.

But I want to write about the envelope (konvert), because everybody knows it and nobody says it. When a planned operation is coming, the family comes with an envelope for the surgeon. Everybody knows the amounts, 300, 500, sometimes more. For me, in the emergency centre, it is different: the ambulance brings a man and nobody has an envelope in their hand, and we start work. That is the law and that is also what I came here for.

The part I find hard is when a family brings a small envelope for me in the corridor, after the night, and says "this is only for tea, doctor". I say no. They push. I say no again, then I go to the toilet and cry a little because I think of my own father and what it costs him to find these 300 som. I keep saying no. It is the only thing I decided at the beginning and I am not going to change it.