needles

Hey guys, this is why I look tired all the time:

Quasi-autobiographical account of an evening; some elements are fictive but the general spirit is left intact

1710: Everyone but the duty crew leaves the medical centre.

1730: Dinner arrives in microwavable white boxes. People enter the pantry, open the boxes and their mood level is all JOHN DOE HAS ENCOUNTERED A BAD MEAL, MINUS TEN MOOD POINTS. This is because they open the boxes and discover that dinner is staring back at them through the charred, gelatinous flesh of their bulbous eyes and eye-stems. I make instant ramen from meidi-ya (butter salt broth and dehydrated potatoes!! Dehydrated potatoes!!) and hide in a corner to use the internet and weep into the deeply aromatic broth with the dehydrated potatoes. I gaze at the dehydrated potatoes swelling up to their full potential. This is somewhat moving.

1800: In preparation for my upcoming vacation, I am browsing Frommer's for "best pho in Hanoi", but I realize I am using the wrong language to do this. Meanwhile I notice the butter salt broth congealing.

1900: Chats with colleague about traveling to Vietnam. "Samuel I suggest you go to China," he says repeatedly in-between my indignant protests. "I was in Beijing and I had a total culture shock," he continues, valiantly confronting his memories of the harrowing plumbing in 1990s China, "they don't close the doors when they poop. The plateaus were amazing." I inform him the plateaus might have, on a subconscious level, inspired his new haircut. Little of my humour is appreciated by others.

2000: Someone else enters the room looking for people to play bridge with. None of us know how to play bridge.

2030: Filled with self-loathing, I throw away what's left of dinner.

2130: After almost completing my Google map of places to visit in Hanoi, a patient arrives. Ignoring the general rule that reporting sick at night should be for urgent cases, he arrives with a runny nose, smelling vaguely of damp rags and suet.

2200: A unit screws up administration for some medical certification and announce their arrival while the doctor tries to call McDelivery. Everyone is irked.

2230: Someone else arrives. "Doctor I can't take it anymore," he weeps. I leave the room to complete the last pin on my beautiful map representing the temporary and symptomatic relief of (romanticized) Florence Nightingale duties. When I soar through the clouds on the wonderful Boeing representing my hopes and dreams, I am going to point back at everyone on the ground with a sort of misplaced sense of schadenfreude.

0000: Someone from outfield is sent here for insect bites. I give him diclofenac and promethazine shots ("one on the arm, another on the bum!"). A lot of screaming and swearing ensues. "Let it all out," I say as calmly as I can, "just let it all out." This session of treatment ends with the both of us shaking hands.

0130: "Should we sleep?" we collectively wonder. Something in the air tells me otherwise, but I fall asleep anyway.

0300: The phone rings. Or was it a dream? It rings again. I answer the call. "We're sending one guy over for physical exhaustion" says the voice. Once again, I am filled with self-loathing. I eat an apple pie.

0328: I am using a rectal probe to measure his temperature.

0332: I am removing his mud-caked boots to do an ECG on him. Mud falls onto my pristine floor in clumps. This makes me very unhappy.

0343: A few of us are transferring him to the sickbay.

0400: I collapse on the bed, but is there anyone around to make sure my airway is clear and that I am breathing? Noooooo...

0530: One of the damn phones wakes me up.

0730: I flee to another room to get some sleep. PEOPLE KEEP ENTERING AND LEAVING THE ROOM. I chant in my head, Don't go to sleep with a frown in your pocket, take it to the yard and tie it to a rocket, shoot it to the moon you'll feel better soon, don't go to bed with a frown (repeat). 

1000: I wake up cussing.