blogombal Chapter 29 The Addictive Thrill
Chapter 29 The Addictive Thrill
The moment Dalia heard Helena's voice, she felt her blood run cold.
If my daughter saw me in this state, all the image I'd built up over the past twenty years would be ruined.
Fortunately, Helena didn't know that her mother had gone back to the study, so after leaving the house, she went straight to the living room and only went back after finding no one there.
In the study, Dalia tidied her hair as quickly as she could ever have, but the hair tie was nowhere to be found, so she could only simply drape it over her shoulders. Then, just as she was about to put her shirt back on, she realized that the top two buttons were also missing...
The footsteps outside the door were getting closer and closer.
"Mom?" Helena had already checked the bedroom and bathroom, leaving only the study, which was still closed.
For Dalia, it would be too strange not to react at this point.
"I'm in the study, Helena."
Finally, just as the study doorknob began to turn, she had a sudden inspiration—
The best way to hide a grain of sand is to throw it into the desert.
So the best way to hide two buttons that can't be fastened is to unbutton your clothes completely.
Since it was just her and her daughter at home, she simply said she needed to change clothes and that was it.
The next second, the door was pushed open.
"Aunt Fuss, give me..." Helena walked in with her phone in hand, but noticed that Dalia's appearance was a little different from before.
Not only were her clothes half-undone, but she had also changed her hairstyle, and her face seemed to have a faint blush...
So he quickly changed his tune: "Are you going to take a shower? Then I'll do it later..."
"It's alright." Dalia's mind was in a mess right now, and she felt that Helena's explanation seemed more reasonable, so she sat back down in her chair. "You go first, I'm not in a hurry."
"Oh..." The latter showed the email on the screen to her mother, "Aunt Fuss invited me to participate in this internship, from August to November."
"I know, I had Fuss arrange it." After all, it was a close call, and Dalia calmed down in just a few breaths. "Your experience in neurology is indeed insufficient. Directly matching you into the program might cause gossip, so we're trying to improve your resume before the application deadline at the end of the year."
"But starting with my year, there's an additional item in the graduation honors points, a Advanced Social Practice course in the first semester of the fourth year, called..." Helena was clearly not very familiar with the course either, so she had to pull out the timetable from her phone again, "It's called Urban Health and Advocacy: Clinical Care in Safety Net Healthcare..."
Upon hearing the long name, Dalia realized, "It's that politically correct elective course?"
She did know a little about the ins and outs.
A year ago, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) released a new version of the "Grants for Education in Health Professionals" bulletin, which included a new compliance clause in the annex:
Medical schools receiving this grant must establish a pathway to enable students to complete the required number of clinical rotations at federally accredited Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs) or Federally Funded Health Centers (FQHCs); otherwise, their grant eligibility will be automatically frozen for the next fiscal year.
Originally, this content was not mandatory. It was mainly to coordinate with the National Health Service’s student loan relief program so that students in need could start calculating the years of relief from their fourth or even third year of medical school, instead of waiting until the end of their long residency training.
However, New York University exploited a loophole in the wording to turn the new HRSA clause into an "honors course".
In layman's terms, this means completing at least 280 hours of outpatient clinical work in the New York City public hospital system or a federally accredited health center.
It's not a strict requirement; you can graduate even without studying it.
But if you want to get the honors graduate title, you have to choose for yourself.
It's important to know that September to December is the critical period for medical students to be matched with hospital admissions. Most people have to focus their energy on a series of interviews and simply don't have time for extra rotations.
This effectively means that only graduates from elite medical families with resources who do not require intensive interview preparation, and graduates who are already prepared to work in the community and are not pursuing competitive residency programs, can meet the requirements.
When the school finalized this matter, Dalia, as one of the "elite college alumni", felt that Helena didn't have much to do in the first semester of her senior year anyway, so it would be good for her to have an opportunity to experience a public hospital and use it as material when writing her personal statement later. Therefore, she didn't pay much attention to it.
I never expected that this matter would ultimately affect my daughter in such a convoluted way.
Helena, unaware of the details, simply replied, "Yes, for eight consecutive weeks starting in September, six days a week..."
They are indeed almost completely overlapping.
"Wait while I contact your Aunt Fuss."
Dalia picked up the phone.
She knew this matter concerned the political correctness of the Democratic Party and the interests of the NYU administration, something that neither she nor Margaret could fundamentally change.
But there may be other solutions.
The call lasted less than five minutes.
Just as Dalia had predicted, Fuss found a win-win solution almost immediately.
"What did Aunt Fuss say?" Helena asked somewhat nervously.
"She said we could change the format," Dalia explained. "Six days a week is the requirement for large hospitals like Bellevue or Jacobi Medical Center. If we switch to a community health center, we can extend the cycle to 12-14 weeks, but only go three days a week. The epilepsy center just happens to require four days a week, so with a little arrangement, we can easily stagger the schedule."
Normally, even the donkeys in a production team wouldn't dare to work seven days straight like this.
But Helena was secretly delighted when she heard that she could go to the community health center.
I almost blurted out, "I think Morissania in the South Bronx would be great."
But the words were on the tip of her tongue, and she held them back.
Not long ago, I was determined to "prove myself independently outside of my mother's protection," and now, less than two hours later, it would be a bit shameless of me to ask my mother to arrange this and that for me.
So she decided not to make any demands and to regard this "randomness" as her first challenge.
And an opportunity for self-reflection.
"Okay, that works." Helena nodded. "I'll go back and prepare."
"Mm." Dalia had almost forgotten the awkwardness from just now and reverted to her aloof mother persona.
But Helena noticed some details before leaving.
"Mom, it looks like a button on your shirt is missing."
This was originally just a perfectly normal reminder.
Let alone mother and daughter, it's perfectly normal for colleagues or friends to say something like that casually.
But Dalia had something to hide, and almost instinctively grabbed the spot where the button had been ripped off: "Ah, I know... I was just about to change."
When she looked up again, she found that her daughter had already disappeared. She probably didn't think that such a small thing needed to be addressed.
"call--"
She let out a long sigh, slumped into the soft chair, and patted her trembling chest.
"Thank goodness Helena didn't find out..." Dalia silently reminded herself, "I need to be more careful about the occasion next time I vent my emotions."
However, instructions are instructions.
An inexplicable, completely irrational impulse suddenly arose from the bottom of her heart, making her involuntarily recall the moment before her daughter pushed open the door.
Since giving birth to Helena, Dalia has never allowed herself to experience even the slightest bit of excitement.
The word "accident" is practically nonexistent in her vocabulary.
until today.
"It seems... to be somewhat stress-relieving?"
The sudden thought almost startled Dalia, and she quickly shook her head, trying to stop the random thoughts from running through her mind.
But some things, once they take root, are very difficult to eradicate completely...
To distract herself, she simply turned on her computer and found a "New York City medical map".
The community health center wasn't chosen randomly.
In reality, even if Helena had made the request, Dalia would never have allowed her daughter to work in a chaotic community like Morissania long-term.
In her view, the best option would be a safe, middle-class community that also meets the federal definition of "health shortage".
After some searching, she set her sights on the Carnasi Centre Clinic, part of Gotham Health.
Located in the southeastern corner of Brooklyn, surrounded on three sides by Jamaica Bay, this neighborhood fully meets the requirements of the guidelines. It is predominantly populated by African American and Caribbean immigrants, but the vast majority are highly educated retired middle-class residents. It is also one of the least densely populated neighborhoods in New York City.
Because residents have high insurance coverage, most emergencies are treated directly at hospitals. Community clinics mainly focus on chronic disease management and routine health checks, making them almost a forgotten corner of the public healthcare system.
The equipment was discarded by other hospitals, and the medical staff's income was among the lowest in the country. Only doctors who had completely lost hope of advancement would be sent there to just coast along...
However, none of this mattered to Dalia.
Helena went there simply to accumulate enough hours for her internship at NYU’s Comprehensive Epilepsy Center over four additional days.
or……
Dalia’s gaze then turned to White Rock, the northeasternmost town in Queens.
In Dalia's mind, a Chinese-American middle-class neighborhood was almost synonymous with gentleness and harmlessness.
Although the workload is certainly greater than in Canasy, White Rock has a lower crime rate, a higher median household income, and the highest average SAT score in New York City. It is a perfect model minority community: safe, hardworking, education-oriented, and you don't have to worry about your kids picking up bad habits on the street.
The only problem is that the patients may include many elderly people and new immigrants with limited English proficiency.
But this actually made her feel more at ease...
Dalia, unusually, experienced difficulty making a decision.
Finally, she remembered that she should perhaps listen to Helena's opinion...
"Never mind, tomorrow will do."
Dalia glanced at the time and thought to herself.