The Apartment Found Her? Yes, and Three of Her Fellow Doctors

Abstract

In May, Dr. Puja Patel took a vacation to Italy. For Dr. Patel and her three friends on the trip, all of whom spent the pandemic working in hospital emergency rooms, it was about processing what they had just experienced. "We were trying to strike a weird balance," she said, "Not talking about work but we wanted to talk about work. We were trying to take our minds off it but have an outlet at the same time." It wasn't just that they worked at the center of a pandemic but also that they were in the process of becoming doctors just as the crisis hit. To accommodate the overflow of bodies, refrigerator trucks were set up outside of the hospital where Dr. Patel worked. "In emergency medicine we're taught to prioritize the sickest patient, someone who's not breathing or doesn't have a pulse," Dr. Patel said. Dr. Patel, who was living with a roommate, started looking in April, four months before she needed to move. Over the past five months, Dr. Patel's appreciation for her new one-bedroom hasn't diminished.