‘Oh, right,’ I reply, thinking: Is this life in the fast lane? A hot anaesthetist, a house party, illicit drugs and my credit card?

I watch, fascinated, as Tom arranges the cocaine into neat lines. He pulls a fifty-dollar note from his pocket, rolls it up, then leans down and effortlessly snorts two lines in a row. He sits up and breathes in.

‘God, that’s good stuff,’ he says, looking pleased. ‘You want some?’

Through my cheap wine-induced haze, I stare at him. I see Tom, the cocaine, my bedroom. I catch a glimpse of myself in my full-length mirror and I wonder who the hell that woman is. Have I finally entered the medical twilight zone?

Before I became a doctor, I looked down on people who snorted cocaine. Only bad people did drugs, I reasoned, and I was never going to be like them. Doctors were good people with pure intentions.

‘This blow is straight out of Colombia,’ Tom says. ‘Sure you don’t want some? It’s as pure as snow.’

What about me? I wonder. Am I still pure? Tom’s cocaine is, evidently, pure as the driven blow, flown all the way from the cartels in Bogotá.

‘I don’t think so,’ I say, feeling terrified by how tempted I am.

I’m saved by the arrival of three of the surgical registrars, who have no such qualms and leap onto the cocaine as if they’ve been in a desert without water for a week.

Tom looks over at me. ‘Give yourself another year,’ he says wisely. ‘Then you won’t be saying no.’

Maybe he’s right. Could he be right? I walk carefully down my extremely steep stairs, so as not to sustain a head injury and be carted off, drunk as all hell, to the hospital emergency department.

‘Fuck, mate, I knew it! Doctors are loose!’ Winnie lurches towards me drunkenly as I reach the bottom of the stairs. ‘Like, they’re fucking out of control!’

‘Where’s Max?’ I ask.

‘Getting a blow job in the bathroom,’ Winnie says. ‘Well, I think he is. Someone is, anyway.’

‘What?!’

Winnie and I look at each other and grin.

‘Come on,’ she says, giggling. ‘We won’t bust in, but if we bang on the door he’ll get a real fright.’

We fight our way to the bathroom through masses of drunk, swaying bodies and people spilling drinks. I see Estelle berating one of her registrars about what a tool he is and wince, knowing she’ll regret it in the morning but also feeling slightly pleased.

I’m just raising my fist to pound on the bathroom door when it’s flung open. Winnie stumbles into me and I lose my footing, and we both collapse onto the floor, shrieking with laughter.

We look up, and I see one of the other interns emerge, vomiting.