(I wrote this a little while back–January 31st, but didn’t have the blog up then, so I’m posting now just for a fun retrospective glimpse into last month.)
Last night of the Inferno Night Shift Month! It’s coming to a close as an unusually busy night. We planned a small potluck for the night team to finish off the month. I made Chicken and vegetable cream soup with homemade bread, and residents brought brownies etc. So far, it’s been a comparatively “black cloud” night. (“black cloud,” from what I understand, refers to these busy nights when incidents keep piling in. Matthew, however, seems to think tonight doesn’t qualify.) Matthew had a surgery soon after he arrived, so I held off on bringing dinner. Once I arrived, a smattering of us managed to sit down in the resident room and eat (though Matthew had to take a phone call most of the time)…and then a “full alert” trauma went off. Chopper incoming, mvc (multiple vehicle crash)…We recongregated later with a different smattering of residents and the attending, but another full-alert came in a short while later. But still, the residents got fed, Matthew liked the soup, and someone asked me “where do you get your bread?” (Yes, my vanity was immensely flattered).
It’s always such a funny mixture of feelings for me, coming in from the outside. The faces I feel like I’m still just starting to know, the halls that mislead me as soon as I stray off the beaten path, our little heart-to-hearts in the office interspersed with residents coming to chat of extubating and hernias and reading CT scans, quick tea dates at the coffee shop…then the loud beeping of pagers and another trauma rolls in and he hurries away, walking confidently through those swinging doors, back into his world of adrenaline and intense teamwork, racing the clock to save someone’s life with a scalpel and life support (or, conversely, come home with a yawning report of silly patients coming in with nothing wrong). When I’m hanging around the office, I often hear the chopper—the landing pad is just around the corner from his office—and always wonder if it’s for him, as he works just a few doors away, but a world apart. (*Cue melodramatic sigh*)
