Nothing Lasts Forever

“I’m going to have to forget about dinner and a movie,” Paige said. “I’m on a thirty-six-hour call.”

Kat nodded. “We just got our bad news. I go on it tomorrow, and Honey goes on Wednesday.”

“It won’t be so bad,” Paige said cheerfully. “I understand there’s an on-call room to sleep in. I’m going to enjoy this.”

She was wrong.

An orderly was leading Paige down a long corridor.

“Dr. Wallace told me that I’ll be on call for thirty-six hours,” Paige said. “Do all the residents work those hours?”

“Only for the first three years,” the orderly assured her.

Great!

“But you’ll have plenty of chance to rest, doctor.”

“I will?”

“In here. This is the on-call room.” He opened the door, and Paige stepped inside. The room resembled a monk’s cell in some poverty-stricken monastery. It contained nothing but a cot with a lumpy mattress, a cracked wash basin, and a bedside stand with a telephone on it. “You can sleep here between calls.”

“Thanks.”

The calls began as Paige was in the coffee shop, just starting to have her dinner.

“Dr. Taylor … ER Three … Dr. Taylor … ER Three.”

“We have a patient with a fractured rib …”

“Mr. Henegan is complaining of chest pains …”

“The patient in Ward Two has a headache. Is it all right to give him an acetaminophen …?”

At midnight, Paige had just managed to fall asleep when she was awakened by the telephone.

“Report to ER One.” It was a knife wound, and by the time Paige had taken care of it, it was one-thirty in the morning. At two-fifteen she was awakened again.

“Dr. Taylor … Emergency Room Two. Stat.”

Paige said, groggily, “Right.” What did he say it meant? Shake that ass, tootsie. She forced herself up and moved down the corridor to the emergency room. A patient had been brought in with a broken leg. He was screaming with pain.

“Get an X-ray,” Paige ordered. “And give him Demerol, fifty milligrams.” She put her hand on the patient’s arm. “You’re going to be fine. Try to relax.”

Over the PA system, a metallic disembodied voice said, “Dr. Taylor … Ward Three. Stat.”

Paige looked at the moaning patient, reluctant to leave him.

The voice came on again, “Dr. Taylor … Ward Three. Stat.”

“Coming,” Paige mumbled. She hurried out the door and down the corridor to Ward Three. A patient had vomited, aspirated, and was choking.

“He can’t breathe,” the nurse said.

“Suction him,” Paige ordered. As she watched the patient begin to catch his breath, she heard her name again on the PA system. “Dr. Taylor … Ward Four. Ward Four.” Paige shook her head and ran down to Ward Four, to a screaming patient with abdominal spasms. Paige gave him a quick examination. “It could be intestinal dysfunction. Get an ultrasound,” Paige said.

By the time she returned to the patient with the broken leg, the pain reliever had taken effect. She had him moved to the operating room and set the leg. As she was finishing, she heard her name again. “Dr. Taylor, report to Emergency Room Two. Stat.”

“The stomach ulcer in Ward Four is having a pain …”

At 3:30 A.M.: “Dr. Taylor, the patient in Room 310 is hemorrhaging …”

There was a heart attack in one of the wards, and Paige was nervously listening to the patient’s heartbeat when she heard her name called over the PA system: “Dr. Taylor … ER Two. Stat … Dr. Taylor … ER Two. Stat.”

I must not panic, Paige thought. I’ve got to remain calm and cool. She panicked. Who was more important, the patient she was examining, or the next patient? “You stay here,” she said inanely. “I’ll be right back.”

As Paige hurried toward ER Two, she heard her name called again. “Dr. Taylor … ER One. Stat … Dr. Taylor … ER One. Stat.”

Oh, my God! Paige thought. She felt as though she were caught up in the middle of some endless terrifying nightmare.

During what was left of the night, Paige was awakened to attend to a case of food poisoning, a broken arm, a hiatal hernia, and a fractured rib. By the time she stumbled back into the on-call room, she was so exhausted that she could hardly move. She crawled onto the little cot and had just started to doze off when the telephone rang again.

She reached out for it with her eyes closed. “H’lo …”

“Dr. Taylor, we’re waiting for you.”

“Wha’?” She lay there, trying to remember where she was.

“Your rounds are starting, doctor.”

“My rounds?” This is some kind of bad joke, Paige thought. It’s inhuman. They can’t work anyone like this! But they were waiting for her.

Ten minutes later, Paige was making the rounds again, half asleep. She stumbled against Dr. Radnor. “Excuse me,” she mumbled, “but I haven’t had any sleep …”

He patted her on the shoulder sympathetically. “You’ll get used to it.”

When Paige finally got off duty, she slept for fourteen straight hours.

The intense pressure and punishing hours proved to be too much for some of the residents, and they simply disappeared from the hospital. That’s not going to happen to me, Paige vowed.

The pressure was unrelenting. At the end of one of Paige’s shifts, thirty-six grueling hours, she was so exhausted that she had no idea where she was. She stumbled to the elevator and stood there, her mind numb.

Tom Chang came up to her. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” Paige mumbled.

He grinned. “You look like hell.”

“Thanks. Why do they do this to us?” Paige asked.