Floating

It's actually 2:30 am on the 2nd when I'm writing this, but since it's my Monday post, I'm back-dating it....

So I'm on night float.

So far, the night has been a series of small and somewhat frivolous adventures. I did some paperwork and fussing and faxing and opened our doors and our fax machine to the LME because the all-night Kinkos was, in fact, not. I took a field trip to the far opposite corner of the hospital to try and get our pager fixed, and that? Is not a short distance. And all we succeeding in doing was killing the pager. I went over because it's been all quiet and (beep-beep-beep) and no one can hear it and the interns are sleeping through it and you'd think there would be a way to adjust the volume, but, you would be wrong. I bought some trail mix and discovered that our ice maker had started falling apart. I tried to explain the geography of NC to a man in a ten gallon hat who was hearing voices. Turns out I lied to him, by the way. Greensboro is not, in fact, a lot farther from here than Butner. I have one patient to see in the ER, but, she's wicked drunk and I'm waiting for her to sleep it off, at least a little, so it's not completely illegal for me to try and sign her in.

The hospital at night is an interesting place. It's quiet, and darker, because either the lights on the units are turned low, or, so much of our ambient lighting in the main atrium is from the skylights it's just naturally dimmer. I discovered some interesting things on my sojourn to the bowels of the hospital where the off-hours communications office is. Like, we have a flower vending machine. No kidding. There's this machine, with all sorts of floral arrangements in it rotating around, and you pick the one you want, pay for it, and the door opens and, poof, you have flowers. 24 hours a day, no gift shop needed. It was sort of sad tonight, though....there's just one little vase of ivory-colored roses left after this big holiday weekend, riding around, and around, and around.....

I did have a scary crisis call, and talked to the police, who were very little help. Honey, if you're out there tonight, I just pray you find the strength to get away from him and get help. You're not alone.

There are two big lessons I've learned doing this job...first, anyone is capable of anything. And second, you're never alone.