2am

What It's Like

If you can ever help it, don't get sick at night.

People get sick at all times of day or night.  Babies like to be born at night.  This is either because of the lunar cycle or because they like the infomercials their parents are watching in the labor room.

In the middle of the night, brains, even doctor's brains, don't work like they should.  Or maybe they do, it's just that they should be dreaming instead of trying to figure out if a patient's fetal heart tracing is going south.  Or if it's okay to dissolve nitrofurantoin in peach juice. 

When babies are about to be born, my brain becomes aware of the phone ringing, a special ring I chose just for work.  I believe it is called "night of the living dead."  My brain "wakes up."  This means I get to stop dreaming about taking care of patients (having nightmares about codes) and actually take care of patients.  My body finds keys, stumbles over dogs, and climbs into the car.  I drive down empty streets, peering out a tiny clear spot in the frost I forgot to scrape off the windshield.  There is one hospital in town, which was excellent planning on the city's part.  That way I won't show up and deliver the wrong baby at the wrong hospital.  At least I can get one thing right tonight.

It's cold outside the hospital, and the badge system isn't really designed to allow you in the building, just mainly to trap people in the stairwell.  Why is the light flashing red?  Ah.  Wrong badge.  Somehow I make it in and find the call room.  Automatically I enter the door code I used for three years in residency.  Astonishingly it doesn't work.  Then I remember where I am and finally bust through the door. 

I wash my hands in the sink.  The automatic towel dispenser fires next to my ear and I jump a couple of vertical feet.  I look around the counter.  There is a bottle of rice vinegar and a jar of Jif.  This reminds me I'm thirsty.  There are no cups.  I drink tap water out of a giant square tupperware container.

And then I go take care of patients.

The only thing worse than my brain at 2am is the brain of someone with less experience, who is even more tired than I am, from being up without sleep every fourth night.  Like the brains of, for example, all the interns out there tonight, running all the major hospitals in the country.  Once, when that was me, I saw a bear in the hallway.

Dear God, help us.  What is wrong with this system?