Bottled ※ Brain: New Year's Eve, PGH, and 2015

I WELCOMED the new year in the hospital. I was on 24-hour shift at the Pay Ward, intermittently called up by nurses for referrals that ranged from possibly fatal complaints (difficulty breathing or chest pain) to electrolyte abnormalities easily corrected by telling the patient to eat a piece of banana. I had brief moments of rest, perhaps the longest ones I've had since I had begun residency two weeks ago. From the call room window I could see fireworks decorating the expanse above Manila Bay. I imagined that, if I were home on New Year's Eve, my street at St. Gabriel would be noisy too. I could see our dog, Benjamin, cowering in fear whenever our neighbors lighted fireworks. The Dizons, who live just right across us, would call us up and invite us to their home; I wonder if their family computer, which we always fantasized about, is still working. My parents would probably be asleep, especially my mother, who cannot tolerate staying up late lest she incur a migraine the next day. But Tatay would wake me and my brothers up sometimes—that much I can remember when I was in elementary school. He would give us firework sticks and light all three of them at the tips with a single matchstick, assuring us that our hands wouldn't need to be amputated because that hardly ever happens if one is careful. I was particularly paranoid; I liked my hands very much.

Inside the call room I turned to Spurgeon's classic devotional, Morning and Evening. The verse quoted was Song of Solomon 1:4, “We will be glad and rejoice in Thee.” I'm sharing what he wrote in full.

We will be glad and rejoice in thee. We will not open the gates of the year to the dolorous notes of the sackbut, but to the sweet strains of the harp of joy, and the high sounding cymbals of gladness. "O come, let us sing unto the Lord: let us make a joyful noise unto the rock of our salvation." We, the called and faithful and chosen, we will drive away our griefs, and set up our banners of confidence in the name of God. Let others lament over their troubles, we who have the sweetening tree to cast into Marah's bitter pool, with joy will magnify the Lord. Eternal Spirit, our effectual Comforter, we who are the temples in which thou dwellest, will never cease from adoring and blessing the name of Jesus. We will, we are resolved about it, Jesus must have the crown of our heart's delight; we will not dishonour our Bridegroom by mourning in his presence. We are ordained to be the minstrels of the skies, let us rehearse our everlasting anthem before we sing it in the halls of the New Jerusalem. We will be glad and rejoice: two words with one sense, double joy, blessedness upon blessedness. Need there be any limit to our rejoicing in the Lord even now? Do not men of grace find their Lord to be camphire and spikenard, calamus and cinnamon even now, and what better fragrance have they in heaven itself? We will be glad and rejoice in Thee. That last word is the meat in the dish, the kernel of the nut, the soul of the text. What heavens are laid up in Jesus! What rivers of infinite bliss have their source, aye, and every drop of their fulness in him! Since, O sweet Lord Jesus, thou art the present portion of thy people, favour us this year with such a sense of thy preciousness, that from its first to its last day we may be glad and rejoice in thee. Let January open with joy in the Lord, and December close with gladness in Jesus.

As I was finished reading, I was called up. There was a small supper with my Internal Medicine colleagues and the rotating interns, and I was invited, if I had nothing else to do for the meantime. I had samplings of cake, pasta, Chinese dumplings, and iced soda. There were many photo ops, too—something IM people are generally fond of. It was a delight to catch up with friends, old and new, and to celebrate a year that was and the year that is to come.