Monkeys

Classes on "How to be the MAN" continue...Today instead of working the floor, they pulled all of us out for management classes. Wiz must have been taking his medications because he actually managed to say civil reasonable things to me in a setting outside the hospital. Usually at these things, Wiz looks at the table in front of him and doesn't make eye contact with anyone in the room, like an autistic child, but today, after my 3rd or 4th attempt at pleasant-ness ("would you like an apple? I brought two, and they're organic." did the trick)He even made a joke.
The administration building for the hospital is really interesting--it's built in a circle, with round windows like a ship. It doesn't have any square corners, which is actually a little bit unnerving, subliminally. I think I've managed to internalize euclidean structure and anything else really shakes me up. The building is also freezing--all the time--and located near the highway. For some reason, the building vibrates constantly, to the point that the powerpoint presentations shimmer. But if you're okay with sitting for 8 hours in a building that feels like it's in an earthquake at the arctic circle, listening to white men in suits who make a lot more money than you ever will drone on about compliance, the revenue cycle, and payroll, it wasn't a bad way to spend the day. On my breaks, when I could, I sat on one of the balconies that overlooked some red and gold maple trees. I tried to pretend the highway wasn't there and focus on the trees, and pretty much succeeded.
What amazes me is how much goes into making a hospital run. I can't believe this whole batch of monkeys (I mean humans) ever came up with it. I'm reading about bonobos (catching up on last month's Believer) and I don't think they're so different than we are--how did we get from there to here? I mean--this baroque insurance coding system--and whole professions dedicated to hammering out payment systems--and all the coordination--the food, the housekeeping, the billing--how on earth did we come up with it all? When I was little there was this story about a snail who's shell kept getting more and more elaborate, until eventually the snail couldn't carry it around and died. (surely it didn't die--it was a children's book after all--but I don't know--the 70's--remember Hope for the Flowers? Yuck. Hate that book. The caterpillars falling off the top of the pile...chilling)
We're all worried about the changes in Medicare, of course. Medicare pays for 40% of hospital bills. Starting in 2009, medicare will no longer reimburse nosocomial infections. So here's what's going to happen: 1)in spite of all the lovely feel-your-butt rhetoric about how this is not a shaming culture, nurses are going to be blamed for giving patients infections. 2)Hospitals--not our hospital because we're good guys (we are!) and we admit everybody--will start avoiding admitting tricky patients (like the horrible private hospital across town who turned away 19 illegal guatemalans from a car accident without triaging any of them 2 years ago, because they decided they were all Level one and needed to be sent to us--they weren't, and precious time was lost and hence, precious, albeit 'illegal' lives) 3) Docs will avoid last ditch/hail mary interventions which just might work because they're worried about infection 4)every single patient, whether he has a hangnail or chest pains will be subjected to every imaginable test within the first 4 minutes of arrival, so we can pick up on anything preexisting and get paid for what we do.
What a mess. Infection is a risk of any hospital stay. We already carry around most of the things that will eventually make us sick and kill us, the little buggies are just waiting for us to get sick enough in order to take over . Our immune systems do the job, but trauma and surgery depress our immune systems, and things that wouldn't normally make us sick, do. Of course, hospitals need to tighten up on infection control--but a lot of it is unavoidable, I think. The system's going to collapse.
Okay, that's my 1/2 hour and my soapbox. My Saab's in the shop and I have to get there before it closes.

Smoking

So I've been thinking about Russians this morning, and I'm also experiencing an almost uncontrollable desire to smoke. I used to smoke. I started when I was 14 years old and I took to it like a pro--I smoked about 2 packs a day until I turned 22--then I quit cold turkey. But it's interesting watching your brain flip around. You don't realize how much you lie to yourself until an old addiction rears its head. And so strong, too! It was like SMOKING has just been waiting, flexing his muscles, hanging around in his wife-beater shirt--still looking good, still smelling like sin and violetas, maybe a little scruffier. But good, good good. I'm driving back from dropping off Lilly and it just hits me like lust--and I start thinking--one won't hurt--and I can almost taste it--almost feel it between my fingers--and I start thinking about how I'll just smoke it in the driveway and then throw the rest of the pack away--and how my friend Matt's mom has been smoking 40 years and she doesn't have cancer, so not everyone gets cancer who smokes, and Robinson Crusoe smoked tobacco and he was just fine (even if he is a fictional character--remember that great scene in that book when he discovers tobacco?--it's so funny) And then I realize what's happening, that my mind is like this little kid trying to manipulate me--and I'm a nurse! The secret to managing an addiction--to anything--a person, a substance, an act--is this: You have to accept that you will never stop loving whatever it is you love. You will never ever stop wanting a cigarrette. There will never be a substitute. You just have to realize that you will wake up almost every day wanting one or 16 or whatever desperately and that you will live with that for the rest of your life. And then you need to realize that it is not any different from when you were actively using--you never got enough then, did you? And you're never going to get enough now, either. Suck it up. That's my daily motto: suck it up. Okay, not really. That's my daily motto....today. But finally after 12 years, the cravings went away, so today is a surprise.
18 years ago yesterday, I ran away in the middle of the night with someone I met in a bar--married him and had two kids (Lilly and Nick). My fiance had cheated on me, and I had just quit smoking the week before, so I think I might have been technically insane. We just jumped in the car and started driving. And then we went a little bit farther, and a little bit farther, and then we were in New Orleans, and then, we somehow crossed some line, the line when you can't turn around and ever go back, and it was completely out of our control. The road got us, the river just swept us out to sea.
It's hard this time of year--people talk about wanderlust--but if you're cursed with it, it's as much of a problem as smoking. I start chafing in November, and I still find myself going--always have--when I was 13 I ran to Atlanta--it's this strange thing, because, I'm seem so quiet and darn normal. But I slip out of back doors and find myself on trains or buses heading who knows where, and I feel so alive. When I'm running away, I feel so completely myself. I feel like the world is really mine, and that I am in the middle of my own story, instead of a handmaiden in the stories of others--I don't feel male or female, old or young. I just hold my nose and plunge...man...
we get this idea that we have to stay in the stories others have written for us--but we don't, not really. The world is a big place, and you are free, even though you might not realize it. We think we have to act out these scripts, but we don't. It's scary when you think of it, because the stories we receive kind of keep us in dreams, and keep us from living and waking up to our moments and our choices--if you really feel the clarity and potential of each moment--as well as the terror and the death in it--you can get overwhelmed.
But if you ever want to know it, who you really are, for a little bit, one morning, just keep driving until you remember your story and turn around.

Lawyers

While Lilly's at church on Wednesdays, Jay and I go out and drink.
Just kidding. We go up the street a block and get a glass of wine at The Bank, which is really a bar. I used to go to mass on Wednesdays before I met Jay, but now I go to the Bank. I have to say, dating a Muslim was healthier physically than dating a Catholic--no drinking, lots of veggies, and almost no nitrites--from bacon, etc. I drink probably three times as much as I did two years ago--which still isn't a lot, but I can see why Jay has a little trouble with the tummy. The Bank s on the corner, and everyone goes there to see who's with who and who's out walking around. It's owned by a friend of mine, Lisa, from junior high. I still can't get over the fact sometimes that we all grew up and ended up doing grownup things in our town--it seems like we're playacting. "Can you believe we're this old?" Lisa asked me once. "Speak for yourself." I told her.
Jay's sitting at the corner of the bar with his best friend, Hunter. Hunter is our local pit bull of a lawyer, who plays on a bigger stage, I guess. He owns a casino in Monte Carlo, of all places. He's hideous--like a James Bond villain--looks like a reptile--bald and oily and fat, but he's weirdly charming and mesmerizing--'like a snake who's about to eat you' is how Jay puts it. Our kids go to school together. I'm glad they are friends, because when Jay and I run out of conversation, Hunter and I can talk--about fiction mostly--Hunter's a big reader. But tonight, Hunter has another agenda:
"I'm deposing you soon," he says, smiling nastily.
"Oh, shit, you took the case?"
About a year ago, a Russian prostitute was admitted to the unit with mysterious sores, presumably burns, that had become infected. She had been hidden, and had become septic. She died, after one of the most disturbing codes I'd ever been through--I had to climb on the bed in order to give chest compressions, my hands had slid over the burns, which was gross--but the worst part was that right before she coded, she looked at me,--she'd been unconscious for days--and she tried to say something to me, and I couldn't understand her, She kept trying, but I just couldn't read her lips, I could almost hear her in my mind--but not quite, and sometimes I still see her face, trying to tell me whatever she was trying to tell me before she died. There were some very strange things about the case--before she died she had also started bleeding from her eyes.
Soupy had done the autopsy and he'd ruled septic shock as the cause of death, but for me, there were still unanswered questions. I was working the night shift when it all hit the fan. I went to the diner that morning and told Soupy all about it--but he couldn't find any hard evidence of hemorraghic fever--but her death was so strange. I think it stays with me still because she was so young, and I felt her life was just lost--there just aren't supposed to be people like this in Little Dixie--you know? I felt she was the tip of the iceberg and that more should have been done to find out who she was and why she ended up dying this way...there was a 'fiance' who was so clearly a pimp...I don't know. She was this person who never got to be a person at all, always living this shadow life
So, here's Hunter, ruining my time wih Jay
"Don't do this to me."
"You had her more than anyone else. You were there when she died." I hadn't told him that, so that means he's subpoenaed records.
"If anything happens to my nursing license as a result of this, Hunter, I and my children are moving in with you, do you understand? We will show up at your door with our 4 dogs, two cats and video games."
"Will you leave Jay and ride around on the back of my motorcycle?"
"Donor cycle."
"agh, nursing's ruined you. You used to be fun."
"I'm moving in with you, too" Jay pipes up.
"You can't ride on the back of my motorcycle."
He leaves. "I'll be in contact."
Jay and I nurse our drinks, after he leaves. I'm drinking Bailey's, he's having the usual vinegary pino grigio.
"We need different friends," I say at last.
Jay nods.

that's my 1/2 hour

Alice

"How do you reconcile your christianity with your buddhism?" Alice asks me this morning. We are sitting in the living room of her 2nd house, the house she keeps in town. Her real house is an old riverboat captain's mansion on the river, but the drive is long and when the weather gets bad or her kids just have too much going on, they stay here. She also uses the downstairs as her office--she's a physician. She's originally from Tennessee, part of a famous fundamentalist, right-wing tribe--converting to Anglicanism was just huge for her--caused a real rift in her family. She's ten years older than I am and is the only person I ever talk to about God and religion. We talk for hours. We used to talk about medicine, too, but no longer.Sometimes I get a little bit frustrated with her as a doctor--I don't think she's rigorous enough, which is the same reason, come to think of it, that I get frustrated with her as a parent. She was raised so strictly that she never disciplined hers, and as a consequence, they're just unbearable. Our kids are the same age, and I look at the mostly mannerly creatures mine have evolved into and compare them with her goth antisocial future serial killers and just want to get down upon my knees....all that said, I love her. It's funny how you can like someone so much and really not agree with a thing they do.
I ran into her at school when I was dropping Lilly off. She was getting out of her ancient Mercedes, balancing coffee and books--"Do you want to meditate with me?" she asked.
So here we were, in her decorator living room, sitting on lemon silk brocade couch pillows on the floor waiting to begin.
"I don't." I replied succinctly.
"Do you worry that it's idol worship?"
This is interesting. This has come up twice this week. A nurse at work asked me if I had buddhas in the house, and, when I said that I did, informed me that I was idol worshipping.
"Do you believe you're saved by grace?" I ask her.
"Yes."
"Is that going to ever change?"
She laughs. "No."
"if you sit and breathe for 1/2 hour, when you stop, will you not still be saved?"
"I'm saved."
"then I think we're okay."
"I know......" she drawls, swinging her grey hair out of her face, "I just started doing this a few weeks ago....and I remembered you said something about doing it...so I wanted to try it with you. I just wonder if I should spend the time praying instead."
"You pray all the time."
"Every minute."
"So, even if you just sit here, I'll bet you'll pray anyways."
Alice has felt desperately guilty her whole life and has no idea why this is so. She is forever trying to make it up, by praying all the time and doing good works. About a year ago, she missed a diagnosis on an infant, and the child is now a vegetable. The details are unique, so I won't go into them, and she was not found guilty of malpractice, but still it shook her to the core. She sort of skated sideways--has become deeply involved in alternative therapies, etc., but I think this is an abdication of the real work of medicine and one she will probably come to regret, but I do understand her desperate wish to not have the responsibility for bringing harm, however inadvertent. She has been losing herself in dreams, I think, wandering in the woods, doing shaman work with some guy in Colorado.
What she needs, and this is coarse, but true, is a good extramarital affair.
But I don't say this.
"Do you do something before you begin?" she asks.
"I say the bodhissattva vow."
"How does that go?"
"Ummmm....." my mind is suddenly blank. We start giggling.
"How long have you been doing this?"
"22 years. Okay, no, I have it. Shu Jo Mu Hen Sei Gan Do/Bon No Mu Jin Sei Gan Dan/HoMon Mu Ryo Sei Gan Gakku/Butsu Do Mu Jo Sei Gan Jo"
"And that means?"
"infinite are all beings, I vow to save them
infinite are all Dharmas, I vow to master them
infinite is the buddha way, I vow to attain it.
Wait. I'm forgetting something."
She shakes her head, "I'm so impressed. I had no idea you were this into this. How often do you do this"
"Every day."
"Since I've known you?"
"Way before that."
"How do I not know this about you?"
Good question. I just shrug. Everyone's a mystery, really, aren't they?
"I can't believe I can't remember the whole thing...."this is really bothering me. How can I say the same thing every single day and not remember it? I don't even remember which thing I'm forgetting. Do I have any of it right at all?
"nevermind, let's just do it."
"the guy who leads the vipassanna group says 'shall we'" Alice offers
I know the guy who leads the Vipassanna (sp?) group. Almost biblically. Another thing Alice doesn't know about me.
"Bong!" I say, doing my best impression of a gong, which makes Alice laugh again, and hit the button on the timer.
We sit for 1/2 hour, breathing. Alice moves around a lot, rolling her head back and forth, tapping her foot, looking around the room. I stay straight and keep breathing. The timer goes off. And right then, the missing piece of the vow floats into my mind, as if had been hiding from me, waiting to play a trick
"I kept having Fahre's (sp?) requiem run through my mind" she says dreamily.
"Infinite are all attachments, I vow to be free of them."
"My goodness, why would you ever want that?" she asks, bemused.

Well, that's my 1/2 hour.

Bad Credit

Oh, it's so hard some times.
I'm riding on my rims.
I applied for a loan last week to pay off my credit cards. I have $25,000 in debt wracked up. Ok, before you think this is too bad, please remember that for 3 years I supported myself and two children with no child support and no income while I went back to school. And I did it for $70,000. So that's 3 years of private school, mortgage payments, gas, clothing and food on $23,000/year. Which isn't that bad. Now, of course, there's family money--so if things got terrible we weren't going to starve--most people don't have that security, and my parents sprang for things like ballet lessons ($250/semester) and trumpet lessons, so we weren't totally pathetic, but basically, I did it and I think I deserve some props.
The loan officer ran my credit report. I've been working really hard on my credit for the last couple of years. I took all my bills that were in collections (and I had a lot left over from my divorce) and started sending each creditor $10/month. When one bill got paid off, I would shift that amount to the next and so on and so forth. It works! Now I have one left that I send $130 a month to. My credit was getting a lot better, but last year I was billed twice for my pap smear. I eventually got tired of fighting the charge and just paid it to save my credit. Then the doctor's office refunded the extra money and still reported it as delinquent to the credit company! It's really irritating.
"Wow," the loan officer said. "I'm really sorry. This is outside our parameters."
"Oh, well," I said philosophically, "thank you very much for your time."
"I'm still going to give you the loan."
"You are?"
"Yep."
I didn't question him. Signed all the papers. 8%. Most of my cards are between 14 and 29 per cent.
He got up to shake my hand as I left and walked me to the door of the bank.
"My mom was a nurse." he said. He had tears in his eyes. "Did it just like you, on her own. Watch out for your back."
Maybe Nick and Lilly will grow up and pass it on like that.
I hope so.
I know there are miracles and good people every where, but sometimes, you get so tired of seeing them hurt it's hard to, I don't know, let the gladness in, you know?
At 11pm last night as I was going to sleep finally, I remembered I hadn't told Mrs. Gore's family that she was an ME hold.
Why was she an ME hold?
Because, when I was giving her a bath after admitting her, I found dried blood on both sides of her groin and nowhere else on her body.
I told Wiz when I found it. "I think there's a possibility of assault."
"You watch too much tv."
"I don't watch tv."
"Oh, right. Well, there goes that argument. Are you trying to pussyfoot around the word rape?"
"You know what I mean by assault. It's the euphemism they use in the papers."
"they automatically check for that in the ER."
"Perez admitted her." Nina Perez is one of the residents, Puerto Rican, arrogant, nasty. 'Hates herself, hates others--so she decided to be a doctor' Wiz's assessment, and I concur.
No expression on Wiz's carp-like face.
"Tell the resident. I'll call the sexual assault nurse."
So the police came, and the S.A.N. and she did an exam, which bewildered and frightened Mrs. Gore. She clutched my wrist and whimpered and looked at me with her filmy eyes, as I helped to hold her legs apart and I thought, if she was raped, she probably thinks she's now being raped again. I wished I hadn't said anything.
What do you do? I don't know. Did Perez see it and ignore it? Would that have been more humane? But if she was raped, don't we need to know and investigate it? Who rapes a 95 year old?
But it would have been good to have spared her that, in her last hours.
I don't know.
Here's what my epitaph will be "I came to no conclusions."
Wiz stopped by the the room as the S.A.N. was packing up her things.
"I respectfully return my ticket." he says.
"Ivan to God. Brothers K."
"You should watch more TV."
"Duly noted."
Well, that's my 1/2 hour.

Pronunciation

It's daylight savings time. I know this because I showed up at work at 6am in the morning. After5 hours of sleep. I realized what I'd done when I walked into an empty break room. I sort of wondered why no one was coming in the building and why the parking garage was so empty--but, you know, too tired to really process it. Mark found this hilarious.
"Did you have sex last night?" He asks me.
"Yes."
"Well, at least you got to have sex..."
"It's not all it's cracked up to be."
Mark recently got a divorce. A spectactularly ugly one. "all the people I have sex with are psychos."
"Having sex makes women psycho."
"Is that it?"
I did have sex last night. Nice sex, surprise sex. But still....Jay has his this ex--the one who married the salsa dancer. And she called at 10:30 to ask how he was feeling (he has a cold). She has a little trouble with boundaries. She also dressed up as Marilyn Monroe on Halloween, plunging halter dress and all. Fortunately, she didn't shave her armpits and she has a lot of sun damage on her cleavage, so the effect was a little off putting. But you know, call me crazy, my hours are precious and I don't want to spend them on the ex.
So I started off grumpy. And got worse.
"What's wrong with you?" Wiz asks. "You're a little off your game."
We're short nurses again. Wiz is clerking, a thankless, horrid job, and charging as well. Sometime in the afternoon, he says, "Barbara's patient just passed, would you take care of it? She doesn't know what to do."
Barbara is one of our new travelers. Originally from Brooklyn Good hearted but oh so slow. And a little bit dense. A kind, lumbering woman with red curls piled on top of her head. I find her sitting in the conference room with the family of the patient. Everyone's crying. Barbara is talking about when her grandmother died, and how much her grandmother is exactly like their grandmother. Being southerners, the family is nodding politely, dabbing at their eyes. I sit, trying to find a place to interrupt and swing the conversation to the necessary arrangements to be made, but Barbara's monologue keeps blooming like kudzu. So I finally just hack on in. "Do you have her belongings?" Yes, they do. Barbara starts in again. They rehash the death in detail. Little by little I coax the name of the funeral home from them. finally, our business is done. They stand and leave, hugs all around.
"Okay," I say to Barbara. "Now, this is what we have to go through. This is the 'Death Checklist."
"Okay."
"This top part is filled out by the physician. What time was she pronounced?"
"1214."
"I can't believe he didn't fill any of this out," I say, scanning it, irritated. Doctors!
"Oh, that's probably because I pronounced her."
"You what?"
"I pronounced."
"You mean the Doctor doesn't know she's dead?"
"No. Well, I don't think so. I mentioned it to one of the doctors in the hall, but all he said was 'oh yes, she was very sick'"
"Which doctor?"
"Oh," Barbara scratches her ear with her pen, as if she is trying to dig ear wax out. "the one with the glasses. The Indian one."
This description fits about 25 doctors on our staff.
"Did he come look at the patient?"
"No."
"Huh." I say 'huh'because I really want to keep it together for Barbara and I don't want to make her feel bad, but this is really a cluster.
"So no one officially pronounced...."I say pleasantly, musingly...
"Well, I mean, she's dead. She's really very dead."
"Huh. Okay. " I say brightly. "Well, let's go tell the resident."
So we do. We have a new resident. Fortunately, he is about 50 years old and has spent a lot of his time doing something else, so he's fairly mellow and has some perspective on life.
"Mrs. Gore died." I tell him.
Deaths are usually busy affairs on our floor.
"What?"
"I just found out myself."
"We just turned around," Barbara offers. "We were all in the room talking and we turned around and she was dead."
"were you there?" he asks me.
"No."
"When did this happen?"
"An hour ago."
"Okay," he says, standing up. "I'll go look at the patient and speak with the family."
"They've left." I tell him.
"Who talked to the family?"
"Barbara and myself."
"What?"
"Just go pronounce, please."
"Jesus."
He goes into the room. "Yes, she's dead all right. Christ. Okay. Patient deceased at 1320."
Barbara says: "1215."
"I pronounce."
"But she died at 1215."
"Barbara, the shrouds are in the supply room by the refrigerator--could you please go get one?"
Barbara lumbers off.
"I'm so sorry. She's very good hearted, but she's not familiar with our protocol. It never occurred to me you had not been told."
"News to me."
We look at the woman. 95. A heart attack. Lived alone.
What do you do?
Wiz bought me coffee.
I'm exhausted. Barbara jumped ship, pretty much. Couldn't deal with the nuts and bolts. Death is so strange, it's so hard to touch people who have died, cleaning them up, turning them, realizing that everything you do is for the living--all the learned gentleness, all the small things that go into caring for the fragile, holding their skin so the tape doesn't rip it, supporting hips and shoulders. I admitted this woman the day before. I cleaned her teeth and held her hand. I washed her hair. I'm glad I took the time to do that. She wasn't conscious, but she would come to and clutch, afraid. It didn't matter now. But it still felt like it did matter. Zipping up the shroud. Leaves me empty and cold. Tags on toes. Covering a face, the series of steps that transform people into things.
Ok. I'm going to have a glass of wine now and go to sleep.

Rush Job

Yesterday started off in a rush. I'm late, to begin with. It's dark out and cold. No time to warm up the car. Put the radio on the right station so I can maybe win Modest Mouse tickets. So I park in the CEO's spot (he's never there on Saturdays and sometimes I get a ticket, sometimes I don't--much worse to walk in late) and rush across the street to the door. I'm about 5 paces behind a female resident who of course doesn't hold the door, letting it slam on me, which means I have to fish for my badge and swipe it. I grimly overtake her in the hall, passing her. Bitch. Then I lovingly let the elevator doors close on her before she can get on. Ha. No, I don't. I do pass her but when it comes to letting the elevator doors slam, when those damn elevators are so slow. I just can't do it. I'm a nice person with deep bitch fantasies. So I just sit and wait and fume and think bad thoughts as she catches up and jumps on the lift. Doctors treat nurses like we aren't even people. Like we're just ghosts. Well, they're so tired, we probably are to them.

Walk into our break room, which seems sort of empty. The reason? 3 nurses down. One hit a deer, two are no calls no shows. Hycwicz is one of the no calls/no shows. True to form, everyone is just sitting around. 'Where's Hycwicz? He's always here." Always. Hycwizc, aka "Wiz" is always here, 1/2 hour early, bald and ugly, scarred carp shaped head, knotted body of a boxer in his faded scrubs. He's like God, or Cerberus. He must be dead I think. "Did anyone call him" I ask the night shift sup, Mark. Mark's a friend of mine, funny, hip. Goatee, nice body, spiky bleached hair. Wiz hates his guts. Of course not. Of course no one called him. I call him--he thought he was going to class--scheduling conflict--he'll be in as soon as he can. As an aside, to anyone reading this: Give people the benefit of the doubt. 9 times out of 10 they deserve it. Call House Mom--"Maggie, I need 2 nurses." "I can get you them by 11." That'll have to do, I guess. 18 critically ill patients. 6 nurses.
"I'll stay til Gerald gets here." Mark says. (Gerald is Wiz's Christian name). So 2 down now. I take four patients. And I'm chargin'. At 9 we get another nurse, an agency guy, trembling in his boots--takes a pt coming back from the OR who went in for something simple but crumps upon arrival back in the unit. Pressures falling--Regina, prissy, plump, childless, hanging desperately to pretty (aren't we all) judgmental and treacherous weighs in--"He shouldn't have that critical a patient.--" She always does this. Always disses other nurses. I hate it. Never wants the responsibility of running the show, but always sitting up in the balcony throwing walnuts. An idea hits me like a flash--"Regina--you're right. But who knew? 14 was fine when he left the unit. Darling, would you please give our new guy your easiest patient and take over? You're such a good teacher, and they're going to be doing so many procedures on him--in fact, if you don't mind, I'll send all the orientees to you right now, so they can watch what's going on? Do you mine sharing your expertise?" Well, what could she say? I'll make a big deal of it with Nancy, our general mgr--how wonderful Regina is, blah blah blah barf and I bet queenie never dissses another nurse to me again. Cross your fingers.

Wiz showed up later and they found us another nurse by 11, so we did get staffed finally. I hand Wiz the supervisor pager-"Just keep going," he says. "You're driving."
So, 2 codes, 3 admits and 4 transfers later, it all worked out. It ended anyways, and no one died. I think everyone wants to kill me--but oh well.

I'd love to tell you more--so much great stuff to tell--but they just called me in to work.