The Devil Wears Scrubs, Page 9

  Nina laughs. “Did you skip out on lunch today?”

  “Am I that obvious?”

  “The nurses usually will let you have some crackers from the nurse’s station if they like you,” Nina says.

  “And what if they don’t like you?”

  We walk back into the hospital as I rip the wrapping off my popsicle and take a bite. It’s so cold that it’s a little bit agonizing to have it in my mouth, but I’m so hungry that it tastes like the best popsicle I’ve ever eaten in my whole life.

  I hear a noise blaring over the loudspeakers: “Code Blue! 3-South, Room 318. Code Blue!”

  Nina looks at me. “Aren’t you part of the code team tonight?”

  Shit, she’s right.

  And then I start running.

  Hospitals are all about codes, and I spent several hours during orientation learning all of them:

  Code Red: There’s a fire! Run for your life! (Or save patients, whatever.)

  Code Yellow: Bomb threat. Holy crap.

  Code Dr. Strong: Someone is beating someone else up.

  Most of the codes vary between different hospitals, but Code Blue is pretty universal. It means someone is maybe dying and needs to be resuscitated. And I’m supposed to save them. Somehow.

  Prior to my intern year, I took a course called Advanced Cardiac Life Support. Basically, it teaches you how to run a Code Blue. It teaches you how to give a patient’s heart an electric shock and administer life-saving medications. After the course, we took a test and I got 100%. I was so proud of myself.

  That was about two weeks ago. I’ve now forgotten every single thing I learned in the class and I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do at this code.

  I run up the stairs because there’s just no time to wait for the elevator. I mean, how embarrassing would it be if I’m twiddling my thumbs at the elevator while a patient is in ventricular fibrillation? But the consequence is that when I arrive at the third floor, I’m seriously out of breath. I have to hold onto the wall for a minute while I cough and gasp for air. This is kind of pathetic. I’m beginning to worry they might need to call a Code Blue on me.

  I do manage to catch my breath though, and I make my way to Room 318. The patient isn’t one of ours—it’s a man I’ve never seen before. He’s extremely yellow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a non-cartoon human being quite so yellow in my life. He’s almost glowing.

  He’s got IVs coming out of both arms, and pads on his chest to prepare for electric shocks if needed. Right now, there’s a male nurse pumping on his chest, as another nurse manually gives him oxygen.

  Dr. Westin is at the head of the bed, running the code. Alyssa is a few steps back, watching him run the code. I’m pleased to find that I beat out Connie, who is nowhere in sight.

  “Hey,” I whisper to Alyssa, eager to point out my promptness. “I’m here.”

  Alyssa turns. She gives me an utterly disgusted look. “Are you holding a popsicle?”

  Yes. Yes, I am.

  Between my hunger and my eagerness to get to the code, I guess I never ended up throwing away my orange creamsicle. So here I am, in the middle of this patient being resuscitated, clutching a popsicle in my left hand. I’d probably be better off if I never came at all.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  A nurse taps me on the shoulder. I can tell she’s angry by the aggressive way she taps me.

  “Did you do that?” she asks, pointing at the floor.

  Okay, so not only did I bring a popsicle to a code, but the popsicle has been dripping all the way here. I’ve left a little trail of orange and vanilla ice cream behind me on the floor. It leads all the way off the unit.

  “Yes,” I admit, hanging my head.

  “Clean it up,” she orders me.

  Connie arrives a minute later and gets to do chest compressions. Whereas I spend the rest of the code on my knees with paper towels, cleaning up the trail of ice cream.

  Hours awake: 8

  Chance of quitting: 47%

  Chapter 13

  “Tell me about your last admission,” Alyssa says to me.

  The Code Blue is over. The patient was intubated and swept off to the ICU in critical but stable condition. He’s not dead is all I know. Now we’re sitting on 3-South, my popsicle is long gone, and I’m starving. But at least I’m not tired and I don’t have to pee. I figure I’m always going to be ignoring at least one of my body’s needs.

  “Okay,” I say. I fumble in my white coat pocket for my notes, but then I remember how Alyssa hates it when I read my notes, so I decide to wing it. “Mrs. Washington is a 59-year-old female who—”

  “Who?”

  I hesitate. Crap, wrong President. This wouldn’t have happened if Alyssa would let me read my notes when I present to her. “I mean, Mrs. Jefferson is a 59-year-old female who—”

  “Don’t say ‘female,’” Alyssa interrupts me.

  “Huh?”

  “When you call her a ‘female,’ what do you mean by that? What is she—a female dog? A female horse?”

  I stare at Alyssa. “No, she’s a female human.”

  “Right, and what’s the word for that?”

  I bite my lip. Is this a trick question?

  Alyssa rolls her eyes. “A woman, right?”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Alyssa sighs. “Go ahead.”

  “Um,” I say. “Mrs. Jefferson is a 59-year-old woman who—”

  Apparently, I’m not destined to say anything more than that first half-sentence because that’s when Alyssa’s pager goes off. She goes to answer it, eying me like I might scurry off if she’s not careful. As if I’d have the courage to walk away from Alyssa.

  I don’t know what this phone call is about, but it’s not from the ER and it’s upsetting her even more than my calling Mrs. Jefferson a female.

  “How much?” she barks into the phone. “No, you’re right, that is a lot. Absolutely, I agree. No more than that. My intern will go talk to him.”

  Alyssa slams down the phone. “Jane,” she says. “You are giving Mr. Chandler way too much narcotics. We’re cutting him off right now.”

  “He’s in pain though,” I protest. “Don’t we have to treat his pain?”

  “I’m not going to sit here and argue with you, Jane,” she says. “Go talk to him and tell him to stop bothering the nurses for pain meds. He can have what’s already prescribed, nothing more.”

  “But what about Mrs. Jackson?” I ask.

  “Who?”

  Crap, wrong President. Again.

  “I mean, Mrs. Jefferson,” I correct myself.

  “No, you need to go take care of Chandler right now,” Alyssa says. “He’s giving the nurses hell.”

  I can’t even imagine such a thing. I’m beginning to get familiar with the nurses on that unit and they tend to be a bit lazy. I can imagine that they’re sick of fetching pain meds for Mr. Chandler, so their solution is to call him a baby and rat him out to my superior. Still, I’ve got to do what Alyssa says.

  When I reach Alex Chandler’s room, he’s got the lights out again and he’s watching television. He shuts it off when I enter the room. He flashes me the tiniest of smiles as I gown up to go inside.

  “Did I get you in trouble?” he asks.

  “No,” I lie. “But… I think we have to cut back on the pain meds. A little.”

  Alex nods. “That’s okay. I… I think I can get through it.”

  This is the guy that was giving the nurses hell? Seriously?

  “I’m just kind of itchy,” he says, shrugging helplessly. “Like, all over. Do you think you Benadryl might help for that?”

  “I can give you Benadryl,” I say, thrilled to be able to offer him something that isn’t a controlled substance.

  “Thanks,” he says. And he just seems so grateful.

  “No problem,” I say.

  I can’t help but imagine what it would be like to have the dumb bad luck Alex Chandler had, end up with an incurable disease, then
find myself in the hospital and in pain. I know I’d want my doctor to be nice to me.

  _____

  I get paged practically the second I sit down in the cafeteria for dinner with Nina and a few other interns. I look down at my tray of food. I haven’t eaten since breakfast, so I bought food with that in mind. I’ve got fried chicken, rice, mashed potatoes, a garlic roll, and a big bottle of Diet Coke. On top of that, I bought two huge bags of chips. By the end of my intern year, I’m going to be as big as Mrs. Lincoln. I mean, Mrs. Jefferson.

  I return the page from my cell phone, even though the reception is spotty. I just don’t have the energy to get up. I hear Alyssa’s voice on the other line, which is almost enough to make me lose my appetite. Almost.

  “I’ve got your third admission for you,” she says. “Come meet me in the resident lounge.”

  “Can’t you just tell me about him over the phone?” I ask.

  Alyssa doesn’t say anything.

  “Because I was about to eat dinner…” I begin. Then I realize this line of argument is pointless. Alyssa doesn’t believe in eating. “Okay, I’ll be right there.”

  “Who was that?” Nina asks me.

  “Alyssa,” I say. “She wants me to come to the resident lounge right now.”

  Nina’s eyes widen. “No. Jane, you are going to eat your dinner. I am not going to allow you to leave this table before you eat at least one drumstick and five… no, eight bites of mashed potatoes. Eat your food, young lady.”

  I smile gratefully at Nina. She’s right—Alyssa can wait. After all, she’s going to be pissed off at me no matter what. I may as well eat.

  I proceed to shove food into my throat so rapidly that I feel like I’m in one of those contests where they’re trying to see who can eat fifty hot dogs faster, a man or a bear. (The bear always wins because it doesn’t need to chew.) I swallow half my cola in one gulp, grab my two bags of chips, and hurry down to the resident lounge.

  I’m already bracing myself to get chewed out by Alyssa, but when I get to the lounge, she’s on the phone. She’s got her cell phone pressed against her ear and she’s actually smiling a little. I didn’t even know her facial muscles were capable of doing that.

  “I love you, sweetie,” she coos into the phone. “I love you so much. I love you more than the moon and the stars and the planets and the whole universe.”

  Oh God. I definitely wouldn’t have pegged Alyssa as the kind of girlfriend who got mushy on the phone. Next thing she’s going to start calling her boyfriend pet names like “schmoopy.” This is nauseating to listen to. Especially after the way Sexy Surgeon rejected me the other night. Nobody will ever call me schmoopy.

  “Good night, sweetie,” she says into the phone. “Mommy will see you tomorrow.”

  Mommy?

  Alyssa’s a mom? I didn’t even realize she was married yet.

  She makes kissing noises into the phone, then hangs up. I stare at her, totally shocked by what I just heard. “I didn’t realize you had a kid,” I say.

  “Yes,” she says. “He’s 20 months old.”

  She doesn’t offer me any more information, including his name, and her tone doesn’t invite questions. But I realize if her kid is 20 months old, that means she had a baby when she was an intern. I look down at my abdomen and imagine what this would be like if I were pregnant right now. I shudder.

  “What took you so long?” Alyssa asks me.

  I don’t dare tell her I was eating my dinner. I try to come up with something else reasonable I could have been doing. “Something came up with a patient,” I lie.

  “What?”

  “Nothing important,” I mumble.

  Alyssa eyes the two bags of chips in my hands. She knows I’m lying, but thankfully, she doesn’t press the matter further. That kid of hers is in for a rough childhood, that’s all I’ve got to say.

  “By the way,” she says. “We’ve got to discuss your days off.”

  My heart leaps. All residents are required to get at least four days off per month. I say “at least” because you could potentially get more days off, but the chances of that are pretty small. Still, I’d been worried that Alyssa wasn’t even planning on giving me my four days and that I’d just be working for 31 days straight.

  She pulls out a calendar for the month. The options for days off are somewhat limited on our cycle of having overnight call every four days. We can’t be off on our call days obviously, and the next day (the post-call days) are off-limits as well. The day after our post-call day, we have “short call” which means we can admit patients until 1 p.m. if it’s a weekday. The next day is the “pre-call” day, which is the only day that can potentially be taken off.

  Alyssa has circled all the pre-call days. Under some of them, she has written “Connie/Jane” and others she has written “Alyssa.” I count the “Connie/Jane” days and see there are exactly four and exactly four “Alyssa” days. “These are your days off,” she says.

  I notice there’s one day that’s circled as a potential day off but hasn’t been assigned to anyone. “What about that day?” I ask her. “That could be a day off, right?”

  Alyssa glares at me. “You know, if you get an extra day off, that means that your resident and your attending have to do your work for you. Does that seem fair?”

  I swallow and think of Alyssa cooing to her son on the phone. “Well, you could take the day off.”

  She hesitates a moment, as if she’s almost considering it. I want her to take the day off. Not so much so that she could be with her son, but because right now, a day off from Alyssa seems almost as good as a day off from work. But then she shakes her head angrily. “No,” she says. “It’s more fair this way.”

  Your loss, Alyssa.

  “Okay,” she says, “let me tell you about your next patient.”

  I nod and grab for my notes from my white coat pocket. And that’s when I realize that my notes are gone. All the notes and paperwork I have from the patients I’ve seen today and will be covering on call have inexplicably vanished. My stomach sinks.

  “What are you waiting for?” Alyssa asks, glaring at me impatiently. She looks down at her watch.

  I can’t tell her that I lost all my notes. Not only do I need those notes to get through the call, but the notes have private patient information on them. Alyssa will murder me if I tell her I lost them. She will literally pick me up and toss me through the window like a rag doll.

  So instead I clear my throat and force a smile.

  “I just ran out of paper,” I say.

  I hop up and grab a yellowing paper from tray of the perpetually out-of-order printer and sit down across from Alyssa, poised to take notes as quickly as possible and then go find my lost papers.

  “By the way,” Alyssa says, “can I take a look at the med list on Chandler?”

  Crap. Does she know? Can she read my mind?

  “Um,” I say. “I left it… in my locker.”

  Alyssa narrows her eyes. “Why on earth would you do that?”

  I swallow. “So I wouldn’t lose it.”

  Alyssa must smell blood, but she just shakes her head at me and doesn’t press me further. Thank God.

  As soon as Alyssa finishes telling me about the new patient, I am off like a rocket. My first stop is the cafeteria, where against all odds, Nina is still eating lunch. She has a nice life.

  “Hey!” she says cheerfully. “Back for seconds?”

  I wish. “Nina,” I say. “When I was sitting here, did you notice if I had some white papers with me?”

  “Oh sure,” she says, grinning at me. “You don’t forget a thing like that.”

  “This is serious,” I say. I’m getting close to tears. “Those were all the notes on my patients and now I can’t find them.”

  Nina is frustratingly unperturbed. “Well, just retrace your steps. Where have you been today?”

  “Everywhere!” I cry. I really have. I’ve been to every unit of the hospital as well as to the Emerge
ncy Room.

  “Well, where did you see them last?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Nina wipes her mouth off with a napkin, and struggles to her feet. “Okay, come on. I’ll help you look.”

  I have officially started to panic though. I keep thinking about all that patient information, open for anyone to find. Like Mr. Chandler’s HIV status. I could go to jail for this. Although, in all honestly, jail might be slightly preferable to my current situation.

  I’m already picturing how I’d look in an orange prison jumpsuit when I nearly collide with a janitor who is wheeling a large trash receptacle down the hallway. I look down into the trash and I can’t even believe my eyes: it’s my notes!

  “That’s mine!” I scream, pointing at the slightly soiled papers wedged between a banana peel and a bunch of crumpled up paper towels. I reach into the trash and carefully extract it with my thumb and forefinger, trying my best not to touch anything else. The notes are stained but intact. “Where did you find it?”

  The janitor looks from the papers to my face. “En el cuarto del baño,” he says.

  I’m attempting to access my high school Spanish when Nina speaks up: “You left it in the bathroom.”

  Wow. I didn’t even realize I’d been to the bathroom today.

  Hours Awake: 12

  Chance of doing something else dumb in the next 18 hours: 110%

  Chapter 14

  I get two more admissions right in a row after that and hardly have a moment to breathe. There’s one point at about 3 a.m. when I realize that I haven’t used the bathroom in a good eight hours. On the plus side, that means I haven’t had an opportunity to lose anything else in there. Anyway, there’s no time for such frivolous things right now—the nurses are staring at me, all waiting for me to complete my latest admission orders.

  “Can you page Dr. Reilly?” I hear one of the nurses say.