Post by Evan on Dec 1, 2015 15:15:35 GMT -8
Like I said, I just started a job doing rounds at the local hospital. There’s only one part I despise, but I hate that part more than Winnie the Pooh hates a bearskin rug. I would quit, but where I come from it’s get a job or go to Hell. So I trudge on.
I do like the place where I work. It’s a fairly new hospital, but it’s in a repurposed plantation mansion that’s over 200 years old. The government seized it when the entire family who owned it died mysteriously. I sometimes wonder if it’s haunted, but maybe that’s just me.
There are five stories, and each one is kind of small so they have their own specialty.
The first floor is the emergency room. I tend to get called down here at random times, usually when someone comes in that has been hurt pretty badly. If there’s a major accident, like a freeway pileup, the ER fills up and I can be there all day. But that’s not the floor I hate. It’s really pretty exciting and most of the people I deal with deserve what they get for being irresponsible. At least that’s what I’ve managed to convince myself.
The second floor is for more long-term patients. Like if you need to stay overnight, or a few weeks for broken bones or cancer or whatever. I rarely have any duties on this floor, nothing really out of the ordinary happens here. When it does, people usually get moved to the third floor before I see them. The second floor is the highest floor where I can’t hear the screaming.
The third floor is for patients that are not as well off. It’s mainly intensive care, but there’s also a couple of rooms for people who are definitely terminal (read: really, really old). I don’t spend as much time on this floor as you might think: The human body is pretty resilient. Even when the end seems moments away, most people can go on for weeks or even months. Although it’s quite often that a code blue sounds (causing a half dozen nurses to rush into a patients’ room with me right behind), it usually turns out everything is made alright, at least for now. I feel pretty bad for these patients on the third floor. Not because they’re on their last legs, but because there isn’t adequate soundproofing, so there are always screams leaking down from the floor above.
Fourth floor is the crown gem of this hospital: Delivery areas plus maternity. Our town is booming with young people since it became a tech hub, so we definitely have a lot more births than people on the third floor. I wish I got to spend more time on this floor, gazing at all of the pink and blue blankets covering warm babies in bassinets. But babies are resilient, they love to show it by screaming loudly, much to the alarm of patients on the floor below. My services are rarely needed, here, and when they are it’s always in the delivery area.
The floor that I truly fear is the fifth floor. That’s the neonatal intensive care unit. For those of you who have mercifully never been to an N.I.C.U., it’s basically a place for newborns who have something wrong with them, or need other special care. The room is filled with row after row of plastic coffin-shaped Isolettes (infant incubator boxes) holding sick babies. There are two holes in each box, where a nurse can reach in to treat the tiny patient. These babies have tubes going into them all over the place. Tubes in their arms, tubes in their legs, tubes in their stomachs, tubes up their noses, tubes down their throats.
As if this wasn’t a cold enough way to be introduced to the world, the boxes have to be completely sterile. That means no blankets, no rattles, no pacifiers. If they were lucky, there would be a small teddy bear, sealed in a plastic bag, sitting in the corner of the box.
It felt like I had to work in here, every single night. There are so many things that can go wrong when dealing with high-risk infants: A tube won’t go in right, a baby doesn’t react to the right meds, their organs collapse, or they simply just… stop.
Dealing with these crashing newborns was actually not the worst part, the part I dread. The worst part was walking to the baby in crisis, past all of the other high-risk infants. Imagine an old-timey circus freak show, except with tiny babies: Micro-premies (1-to-3 pound babies. A healthy newborn weighs about 7 pounds.), crack babies, heroin babies, babies addicted to mystery drugs that the doctors can’t even figure out, babies with their stomachs on the outside of their bodies, babies with their intestines on the outside of their bodies, babies with every single abdominal organ on the outside of their bodies.
But the absolute worst were the lonely babies. For some, I was the first visitor that they’d had in days (who wasn’t a hospital employee). Some hadn’t even been named because their mother had bailed. I desperately wanted to give these babies a name, to take down the sheet of paper attached to the Isolette upon which “Baby” had been hastily scribbled, and write “Hector,” or “Isabella” or even the stereotypical “John Doe.” Anything that would give them a shred of humanity. But hey, giving humanity is definitely not one of my job duties. Quite the opposite, in fact.
There’s almost no screaming, here. I’d kill to hear some screaming, it would mean they actually have lungs that work okay. When I am needed, I go in there, do my best to maintain tunnel vision, get the job done, then get out as soon as possible. I frequently hit the break room afterward, even though it’s also on the fifth floor. Tiny babies don’t take up much room, so the fifth floor had some extra space for an employee lounge. It’s just a table, some chairs, a TV, and lockers for the doctors and nurses.
Of course, I didn’t have a locker. I don’t even really have a use for one. I guess I could store my hood and cloak in there, if I ever took them off.
But there was definitely not enough room for my scythe.
I do like the place where I work. It’s a fairly new hospital, but it’s in a repurposed plantation mansion that’s over 200 years old. The government seized it when the entire family who owned it died mysteriously. I sometimes wonder if it’s haunted, but maybe that’s just me.
There are five stories, and each one is kind of small so they have their own specialty.
The first floor is the emergency room. I tend to get called down here at random times, usually when someone comes in that has been hurt pretty badly. If there’s a major accident, like a freeway pileup, the ER fills up and I can be there all day. But that’s not the floor I hate. It’s really pretty exciting and most of the people I deal with deserve what they get for being irresponsible. At least that’s what I’ve managed to convince myself.
The second floor is for more long-term patients. Like if you need to stay overnight, or a few weeks for broken bones or cancer or whatever. I rarely have any duties on this floor, nothing really out of the ordinary happens here. When it does, people usually get moved to the third floor before I see them. The second floor is the highest floor where I can’t hear the screaming.
The third floor is for patients that are not as well off. It’s mainly intensive care, but there’s also a couple of rooms for people who are definitely terminal (read: really, really old). I don’t spend as much time on this floor as you might think: The human body is pretty resilient. Even when the end seems moments away, most people can go on for weeks or even months. Although it’s quite often that a code blue sounds (causing a half dozen nurses to rush into a patients’ room with me right behind), it usually turns out everything is made alright, at least for now. I feel pretty bad for these patients on the third floor. Not because they’re on their last legs, but because there isn’t adequate soundproofing, so there are always screams leaking down from the floor above.
Fourth floor is the crown gem of this hospital: Delivery areas plus maternity. Our town is booming with young people since it became a tech hub, so we definitely have a lot more births than people on the third floor. I wish I got to spend more time on this floor, gazing at all of the pink and blue blankets covering warm babies in bassinets. But babies are resilient, they love to show it by screaming loudly, much to the alarm of patients on the floor below. My services are rarely needed, here, and when they are it’s always in the delivery area.
The floor that I truly fear is the fifth floor. That’s the neonatal intensive care unit. For those of you who have mercifully never been to an N.I.C.U., it’s basically a place for newborns who have something wrong with them, or need other special care. The room is filled with row after row of plastic coffin-shaped Isolettes (infant incubator boxes) holding sick babies. There are two holes in each box, where a nurse can reach in to treat the tiny patient. These babies have tubes going into them all over the place. Tubes in their arms, tubes in their legs, tubes in their stomachs, tubes up their noses, tubes down their throats.
As if this wasn’t a cold enough way to be introduced to the world, the boxes have to be completely sterile. That means no blankets, no rattles, no pacifiers. If they were lucky, there would be a small teddy bear, sealed in a plastic bag, sitting in the corner of the box.
It felt like I had to work in here, every single night. There are so many things that can go wrong when dealing with high-risk infants: A tube won’t go in right, a baby doesn’t react to the right meds, their organs collapse, or they simply just… stop.
Dealing with these crashing newborns was actually not the worst part, the part I dread. The worst part was walking to the baby in crisis, past all of the other high-risk infants. Imagine an old-timey circus freak show, except with tiny babies: Micro-premies (1-to-3 pound babies. A healthy newborn weighs about 7 pounds.), crack babies, heroin babies, babies addicted to mystery drugs that the doctors can’t even figure out, babies with their stomachs on the outside of their bodies, babies with their intestines on the outside of their bodies, babies with every single abdominal organ on the outside of their bodies.
But the absolute worst were the lonely babies. For some, I was the first visitor that they’d had in days (who wasn’t a hospital employee). Some hadn’t even been named because their mother had bailed. I desperately wanted to give these babies a name, to take down the sheet of paper attached to the Isolette upon which “Baby” had been hastily scribbled, and write “Hector,” or “Isabella” or even the stereotypical “John Doe.” Anything that would give them a shred of humanity. But hey, giving humanity is definitely not one of my job duties. Quite the opposite, in fact.
There’s almost no screaming, here. I’d kill to hear some screaming, it would mean they actually have lungs that work okay. When I am needed, I go in there, do my best to maintain tunnel vision, get the job done, then get out as soon as possible. I frequently hit the break room afterward, even though it’s also on the fifth floor. Tiny babies don’t take up much room, so the fifth floor had some extra space for an employee lounge. It’s just a table, some chairs, a TV, and lockers for the doctors and nurses.
Of course, I didn’t have a locker. I don’t even really have a use for one. I guess I could store my hood and cloak in there, if I ever took them off.
But there was definitely not enough room for my scythe.