How To Save A Life

Man did I have a busy, busy night at work. First of all it wasn't even my night to work. (Isn't that how all crazy workdays start?) Our full-time 3rd shifter is ill and in the hospital so I covered for her, as part of my part-time 3rd shifter duties. I knew that's how it would have to be when I took the job so I don't mind doing it. I also have a lot of respect for this woman and know she would bend over backwards to cover for me too. We work well that way. Now covering for some of those bitches on other shifts? Well that's a different story for another day. But I digress.

My night started out fairly uneventful. I did some work on a book I made full of all of our codes. I had been lugging around a stack of just random sheets of typed info regarding codes so I finally put them all in slickies and got them all organized. It felt good when I was done. I have the IT department to thank for it. They were doing computer updates so the Internet was down from 11pm when I got there until 12:30am. Thanks IT! Then...1am came. I felt the common pressures of my bladder. I had to go to the bathroom. Here's where it can get interesting for me. See...we only get 1 bathroom break in our department on 3rd shift. I know, right? Here's why that is:

First of all, there's only one operator at night to answer calls. We also have to be there to answer the "code phone" (cue "dun-dun-duuuuuun" music). I guess it's our equivalent to The President and his famous red phone. So, when we need to leave the office to go, uh, powder our nose, someone has to answer the phones. I typically call downstairs to the ER registration desk and if she's not busy I can transfer all calls to her. If she's busy I used to be able to call Security and they would come up to the office and answer phones, however a few weeks ago some policies were changed and let's just say they keep pretty busy in the ER now and usually aren't able to get away.

I try to wait until sometime around 3:30 to go to the bathroom. It's kinda right in the middle of my shift. If I can wait longer I can but I usually can't even make it to 3:30. I'm more of a 2:30-3:00 girl. So when I had to go at 1 I waited. 45 minutes later we got a code. A level 1 trauma alert. This is typically someone who's been hurt in an accident of some sort. Sometimes it's a gunshot victim. These used to be a bigger deal for us at switchboard when we used to have to call in the surgery team but we don't do that anymore (thank god!) so it wasn't that bad. Then, 30 minutes later I got my first ever Code Pink. Code Pink is just like Code Blue except the victim is under the age of 8. This little one was just 2 months old. After a while they decided to air-lift her to another hospital so I helped co-ordinate that. Then the ER realized they didn't have a special ventilator for the baby to have on the air flight so one had to be brought from another one of our hospitals in the next city. The problem was getting it to us. Respiratory Therapy called RT at the other hospital and they couldn't leave. Security over there couldn't leave b/c they had only one guard. This whole time I'm connecting calls for our RT dept and the other RT dept. I'm talking to security on the radio. Then I decide to try our maintenance department. I talked to them on a different radio we have for them and they said they would go. Now I'm talking to all of those other departments again to let them know we found someone to get the ventilator. Whew! Security for the other hospital told me to tell maintenance to meet them in the ER garage and they would have the vent ready. I took a few calls and by the time I got maintenance on the radio they said, "Too late, we've got the ventilator and we're on our way back." Wow! After it was all said and done they got me on the radio and said, "If the state police call, tell them you don't know anything about a white van speeding down the road. I swear it wasn't us!" Riiiiiiiiight! Who wouldn't have done the same thing when a sweet little baby's involved? Unfortunately I heard the baby wasn't doing well when it left and that mostly it was transported for the sake of the parents. If it were my baby, I would do the same. I don't think I could live with myself wondering, "what if we had gone to another hospital to try something else?" In the middle of all of that calling to get the ventilator some guy calls and says, "I've been thinking about suicide and I've decided. I think I'm gonna do it." Not on my watch you're not.

"Sir? I've got someone here you can talk to about that, ok? Can you hold on just a second?"
"Yeah."

I'm not sure what I would have done if he would have said no. Probably peed my pants. It wouldn't have taken a lot for that to happen because now it's 3:00 and guess what? I still have to go to the bathroom! I look at the ER list to see how busy registration is and they're swamped. I know my girl's not gonna be able to watch the phones for me. Dang it! I wait another 45 minutes and can't wait anymore. Now it's been almost 3 hours since I first had to go. I call:

"Hey! Can you watch the phones for a minute?"
"Yep!"
"Oh THANK GOD!!"

Relief at last. I can't even tell you how happy I was to see 7:00 come. I will say though that it made the night go by very fast. I love being busy.

Meredith Grey: [narrating] We like to think that we are rational beings; humane, conscientious, civilized, thoughtful. But when things fall apart, even just a little, it becomes clear we are not better than animals. We have opposable thumbs, we think, we walk erect, we speak, we dream, but deep down we are still routing around in the primordial ooze; biting, clawing, scratching out an existence in the cold, dark world like the rest of the tree-toads and sloths.