The corridors were dim and quiet; families were either at home or bunked down in the waiting rooms. The entire hospital was in internal disaster mode. It had been snowing for the last 12 hours and had accumulated over 3 feet News 10 and the weather channel was calling it the blizzard of the century.
Big frigging deal, they say that once a year in Syracuse. The golden snowball definitely goes to us again this year! The entire upstate NY area was covered in a thick blanket of snow and Syracuse was still getting the worst of it.
It was after 3 am and ambulances had stopped coming in hours ago, the streets were impassable to anything other than a snowmobile and even they didn't dare risk this kind of snow. The ghostly image of the parking garage across the street was all but invisible.
"Why did I have to choose upstate NY for my residency?" I murmured under my breath.
Power was out all across the city, and the hospital was on generator power. All staff had been held over, none of the nurses, Doctors or techs could leave. There was no one coming in to replace them.
Lighting in the ICU was low, but the area was still bursting with activity. There were still surgeries going on and still sick and injured to be tended to. The snow started just after 11 am and most of the nurses had been there since 7 am. It was now just after 2 am. Most of the residents had been there since 6 am, including myself.
I am exhausted beyond anything coffee can fix, and anyway I'd had so much caffeine just to get me to this point and definitely not enough to eat, if I had any more I'd be liable to become a patient. Right now a couple minutes sleep sounded better than anything else.
All of the staff was rotating out to shower and sleep. The hospital still had 2 units under reconstruction, but the rooms were at least finished enough to push a couple beds or stretchers into, and the showers worked. I decided not to even go that far; there is an on call room right across from the staff locker rooms right around the corner from the ICUs. Most of the ICU staff had been using this room to get some sleep since it was so close to the units in case of emergency. I hoped that at least one of the three beds was unoccupied. I really didn't want to sleep on the bench h in the locker room. I opted to take a quick shower and change my scrubs while I had the opportunity.
The water in the shower was hot, really hot, but without a heck of a lot of pressure. Kind of like a glorified kids outdoor sprinkler. All I had was crappy hospital soap and Johnson's baby shampoo one of the nurses gave me earlier, but it was better than nothing. The emergency lights in the locker room barely reached the shower, combine that with the crappy water pressure and it wasn't a great shower by any measure, but right now after for being up for more than 20 hours and in surgery for at least half that the shower felt better than a Tahitian waterfall in summer.
Reluctantly stepping out of the shower I quickly dried and dressed in hospital issue generic blue scrubs. I threw my dirty underwear in my locker; I didn't have another pair, and didn't feel like putting them back on now. What harm could come from going "commando" for a while. Who'd ever know?
I quietly opened the door to the call room, in case anyone else was sleeping. The room was almost pitch black, the emergency lighting from the hallway didn't reach much beyond the door, so I held the door wide open for a second to see if any of the 3 beds was empty. I was in luck, the cot in the corner was empty, although I couldn't really tell if anyone was in either spot on the bunk beds.
Taking my small bundle of linens I closed the door and went over to the bed. It was now completely dark. Stripping off the old sheets (who knew who had slept there earlier) While putting the new sheets on I heard the sound of someone shifting around on the top bunk on the other side of the room. I finished quickly so I didn't disturb whoever they were any more than I already had. The sheets didn't fit well and they gave me a little bit of a hard time, so I just decided to leave them how they were. Anything was better than sleeping on the bare plastic mattress.
I heard more shifting from the bunk and wondered who was there and if I should at least say something to let them know who I was. The shifting stopped and I heard even breathing, suggesting that he person whoever they were was asleep again. It was probably one of the medical residents, the other 2 surgical residents were either in the OR, or in the emergency room with patients. I decided not to say anything. Didn't want to disturb whatever little sleep they were lucky enough to get tonight. Soon enough one of our pagers would go off and we'd both be awake anyway.
I lay down on the bed , scrunched my flatter than flat pillow up and pulled the covers up and laid there..... And lay there...... and laid there.
Fuck..
Why couldn't I fall asleep? The mystery occupant of the bunk was snoring softly, barely even a snore really, just soft rhythmic breathing. Well at least someone was getting some sleep. The harder I thought about sleep the harder it was to fall asleep.
Shit...
I had one surefire way to fall asleep, but was hesitant to do it with the mystery sleeper across the room.
"Forget it.", I said to myself.