The
alarm goes off at four but all it does is remind me that I have to get out of
bed; sleep has eluded me today. That glorious sunlight is the reason for this,
it has been taunting me from the moment my head hit the pillow. “Come out and
play Zeeshan, the weather is great and everybody is enjoying it!” Yeah yeah, I
know.
The shower
is scalding hot – nothing else will do for
these weary bones. I stand there surrounded by steam and pray for a quiet
night. A chance to nap for an hour or so…yeah that would be amazing.
I catch
the subway right before the doors close and tuck into a corner with my coffee
and burrito. A man gets on at the next stop and implores everybody on the train
to help him out with a dollar; times have been hard for him. I’ve heard his
pitch countless times over the past three years while watching the track marks grow
up and down his arms. Today is the first time I have seen him in three months
and my sigh of relief is surprisingly loud. A few stops later I give him the
burrito and step off the train.
Lisa
hands over the Schnook [1] pager as if it is demonic hot potato. “There’s four
pending from Episcopal [2] and the ED has 30 in the waiting room, I’m sorry!” I
know she feels bad for me but it still
can’t stop her from having a slight hop in her step on the way out.
The
night unfolds as promised: all four of those patients arrive at the same time. Things
get frantic but after a little while it settles into an organized chaos. The
emergency room hates that I try to fight every admission coming in and my night
admitters hate me for caving in all the time. I never even have a chance to
miss that burrito.
In
between this madness I get a call from a surgery intern on the other side of
the hospital about a patient with chest pain. He is alone and wonders if I have
the time to help him out. I grab my
papers and start walking, it feels good to stretch my legs. The patient still
has chest pain when I get there and the nurse has just printed the EKG. Not too
bad I think before realizing that tucked in the corner are some ST elevations.
The patient sees how wide my eyes have become and starts to worry. I tell him
everything will be fine and call Cardiology; a short while later, we wheel him
to the Cath lab.
Ten
minutes pass and I am back in my fortress of solitude; the episode is all but
forgotten. These admissions aren’t going to do themselves
now are they? The night goes on and moments later I am staring at the sunrise over
Philadelphia; beautiful.
I hand
over the Schnook pager and say hi to the heart patient on my way out to the
subway. He is doing fine but a little annoyed that breakfast isn’t here yet. So
am I.
[1] Schnook is a german word meaning "a person easily duped; a fool." Its the title we give to the person accepting medicine admissions at my hospital...because we are easily duped into accepting admissions.
[2] One of our smaller community hospitals; a lot of our admissions come from the Emergency Department (ED) here.
