trying to leave the hospital

by: poppyseed

Sat Oct 17, 2009 at 13:07:02 PM PDT

because i'm at home with my smelly dog and the tv playing my favorite shows in a loop in the background so it sounds like my friends are chatting in another room which always helps me forget that i'm not in the ER trying to examine that guy in the five minutes i have before attending rounds, before i have to unleash my intern on the hospital, flinging requests at the radiologists and the specialists, before i run down to pathology to check if there are blasts on the peripheral smear so i can page hematology from surgical admitting because this hospital just does not have enough phones, enough computers, enough.

and it's the middle of the night and i'm tucked into the bullpen with a dvd playing softly in the background and my coat hanging on the back of the door and the light on in the other room and i'm trying not to think about the guy we admitted who was discharged from surgery the day before too weak to walk and how the @#$*&^ was he supposed to take care of himself alone by himself in his apartment with his brand new cancer and his gigantic staple line like a zipper down the middle and we picked him up unclaimed like a bag at the airport from the ER because we're supposed to take one unclaimed from the ER every day even though the clinic is full and has been full for as long as i've worked there and my own patients can't even get in to see me and the clerks make fun of me because i keep asking to see my patients and they keep telling me i have no appointments until some unbelievable time in the far distant future but i want to see this guy because he has nobody, really, and i don't know how we're supposed to find him a place to go to die when he has no money and wasn't surgery supposed to do that before throwing him out on the street two days ago?

but i'm at home with my smelly dog and it's 11 o'clock at night and i've been up and working since six o'clock yesterday morning and the clock keeps wandering forward toward the doors of the hospital that i keep trying to shut behind me.

and the noise coming from behind the door is like the noise coming from the crowd at a football game. and in my mind, the patients press up against the glass of the door, calling out to me and pointing at things they need me to get for them.

and it's hard even in my mind to turn my back and walk away from those doors.