The front desk doctor starts making her rounds at 7 a.m. seven days a week, checking in on her newest patients who were admitted from the emergency room the night before.
It’s Dr. Natalie Karapetians’ second month on the job at Providence Holy Cross Hospital in Mission Hills, and she’s looking forward to her seven days off. But before she leaves for the week she has a stop she wants to make.
There are some local high school students volunteering at the front desk she wants to meet. She has a story to tell them.
It’s about a little girl who decided she wanted to be a doctor after watching her grandfather admitted to the hospital many times over the years when he became ill.
She would watch him go into the hospital a very sick man, then a few days or a week later, he’d be much better, and ready to come home. Her mother and father would grasp the doctor’s hand and thank him profusely. Then, the doctor would walk out of one hospital room and into another, trying to send another patient home.
What a wonderful job that would be, the little girl thought. Making people better.
Dr. Natalie Karapetians at Providence Holy Cross Hospital in Mission Hills CA. Karapetians was a volunteer at Holy Cross 11 years ago when she was in high school, and returned in October as a doctor. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
It was on her mind a lot, growing up not far from the hospital. She got straight As in science and math at Granada Hills Charter High School and had the full support of her parents, although they did wonder if spending her life working in a place people were desperately trying to leave and avoid could be a bit depressing.
She had to find out for herself. When it was time to choose a community service project for school, she chose the front desk at her grandfather’s old hospital.
She put on a burgundy jacket all volunteers were required to wear, and sat next to a security guard — giving directions and room numbers to anxious, often distraught families wanting to see their loved ones.
She watched these same families bring them home with smiles on their faces as they wheeled them through the front doors. Yes, this is where she wanted to work.
“I’m going to be a doctor one day,” she told one of the security guards.
“Sure you are, dear,” he said. It was the dream a lot of these kids wearing the burgundy jackets, but he’d yet to see one come back with a medical degree.
Eleven years later, Dr. Natalie Karapetians walked through the front door of her grandfather’s old hospital and said it felt like she was home. She was 28 now, but felt 17 as she watched a young high school student wearing a burgundy jacket give room directions to a family.
One of the security guards recognized her. “Aren’t you?” he began to say, looking at her doctor’s ID. “Well, I’ll be. You made it back.”
Yes, she did, Dr. Karapetians said. She made it back — as fast as she could.
“My parents taught me (that) time is more important than anything else,” she said when we talked this week. “I wanted to be done with everything (medical school) as soon as possible and come home to my family.”
After undergraduate school at UC Riverside where she majored in biology, she went to medical school at American University in the Caribbean for two years and returned stateside for her clinical rotations.
She didn’t want to spend the extra years of med school specializing in any one field, she wanted to be a “hospitalist” — a general physician working only in hospitals, this one in particular.
It’s now her hand that families are shaking as she goes from room to room trying to make people better.
“It’s almost like a revolving door,” she said. “I get to impact so many lives everyday and that’s awesome.”
She has no plans to ever leave Holy Cross. The Valley is her roots, it’s where she wants to live and build a family. “This is my hospital. This is where I need to work,” she said.
When she stops by that front desk, she’s going to ask the volunteers in the burgundy jackets what nobody asked her when she sat there 11 years ago.
“I’m going to ask what brought them here and what are their goals? And, if they feel like they belong here, and want to become a doctor, I’m going to help them anyway I can.”
Because that little girl inside her was right. What a wonderful job it is, making people better.
Dennis McCarthy’s column runs on Sunday. He can be reached at dmccarthynews@gmail.com.
Related Articles
Honoring veterans on Veterans Day, but also remembering those who didn’t come home
Dennis McCarthy: Ages 70-plus may renew their driver’s license online, skip DMV — for now
The cobbler business is better than ever but the skills of shoe repair experts look down-at-the-heel