On Call

A lovely night spent in the hospital, living in perpetual fear that your pager will go off and send you off to doom. That's what call is to me.

You shove food into your mouth in-between patients being admitted or needing something acutely. The nurses page you for things that you think could have been handled without your input. They don't page you when something happens that you think warranted a notification.

The nighttime has a strange emptiness to it, somehow. I don't know how people work night shift all the time, especially when they do it by choice. There are reasons that most things aren't open at this hour - you would not want to be the person who has to provide service for the person who decides that 3am is an appropriate time to do anything but sleep.

Some people thrive on the pressure. They work well in an environment where their sphincter is in a constant state of pucker. I am NOT one of these people.

My mantra: keep them alive until morning.