Walking through the dark construction zone of my now demolished kitchen, I made my way to the garage and out into the still, hot, humid July night. The air felt so thick, it was hard to breathe. At 1 a.m. I was headed to the hospital for a patient that just arrived in active labor. On the drive in, I had the air conditioner blasting to cool off the car and to wake the slumber from my head. By the time I reached the bright lights of the hospital 20 minutes later, I was fully awake. It was time to work.
Labor and delivery was buzzing with activity when I entered. Nearly all 20 rooms were filled with patients either in labor, who had already delivered or with some sort of complication needing closer attention. The 11-day-old residents were hovering behind the more senior residents at the “board” — literally a whiteboard with each patient’s status — trying to soak up knowledge as fast as possible. And the even greener medical students were hovering in the next layer back. To add to the buzz, the computer system to which all the charting and monitoring were connected, was about to go down for maintenance for 2 hours, leaving us in a lurch to communicate and type notes in the charts.
I slipped through the crowd at the board and went to see the patient I was called in to care for, a patient I had never met since she saw a doctor I cover for while on call. Even though it was 1:30 a.m., there were half a dozen people in the room with her. As soon as I walked in to check her though, everyone left but her husband. She was comfortable, having just received an epidural, and her labor was progressing well. I introduced myself, explained I was the doctor on call and would be caring for her.
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