ADVENTURES IN THE HOSPITAL:
It was my second attempt at an evening shift, 3:30 to midnight, working on a medical-surgical floor that is sadly understaffed and overworked, though none of the Powers that Be apparently think it so. I can attest to this fact; every single one of us was busy beyond comparison last night, my feet and legs hurt so terribly by midnight. Everyone's eyes were clouded over with a darkening gleam that begged the hours to pass by at a quicker pace.
I had many adventures with bedpans last night, which only served to further fuel my desire to get my doctorate of NP as soon as possible. I was running from call light to call light, listening to the hallucinating man spout off some nonsense about helping him escape from the RLDS church, cleaning up an accidentally bowel movement in bed, drawing STAT blood labs, and putting lotion on the back of a very demanding patient. Many of the statements of action above correlates to the same patient, but I digress.
I ran to the hopper in the Soiled Linen room, a small room with a laundry chute, biohazard trash cans, and the hopper -- a mechanism to place bedpans in, close the door, hit FLUSH, and take out the freshly cleaned bedpan.
I slipped the bedpan in with a new plastic covering I was unfamiliar with, hit FLUSH, and watched it flush. ... And not stop flushing. I stared.
Then water started seeping out the sides. No, EXPLODING out of the sides.
Running down like a torrent to the floor.
I screamed.
"OH MYYYY GOOOOOOOODDDDDD!"
I leapt over the growing water puddle on the floor with agility I could only before fathom I had, and in one quick movement, hit the manual override to stop the machine and land on the other side of the door, slamming it shut behind me in a vague attempt to stem the flow of tides.
"THE HOPPER IS OVERFLOWING!!!!!!!" I screamed. I shoved towels under the door but to no avail, the towels only became soaked as the declining plane of the room forced gravity's hand in moving the waters toward the main hallway. I cannot fathom how they thought it was a good idea for water to run IN to the hallway from THAT area.
On my break, I wound up calling Twin-chan, who laughed hysterically with me over poop jokes. Later on in the night, when the family of one of my patients walked up to me as I was taking his blood sugar, they tapped me on the shoulder.
"I wasn't trying to eavesdrop on your phone conversation earlier downstairs," she said, "but we all heard you laughing and we thought it was amazing, and really refreshing, that even in a place like here you can laugh like that."
I giggled, remembering our poop conversations and not feeling abashed at all of having been overheard.
"It's no problem," I said. "I don't mind. I'm glad you guys got some joy out of it. My best friend, she can always make me laugh. And because she's a biology major, we can be gross and not literally gross each other out."
As I stuck the patient to draw blood, he looked at me, and opened his mouth. Out came a shout that curdled my blood, I had to use all my training not to jump and slice my own finger with the used needle.
"Are you okay?!" I said, putting the blood I had gotten onto the glucose reader.
"Haha, I'm fine," said the patient. "I wanted to see what you'd do if I jumped like that."
"You can't do that to me!" I laughed. "I'll jump. I really will. I did actually."
His family grinned at me.
"We'll remember that."
Cue about ten o'clock at night as my feet first began to ache, and I was hauling some necessities from the supply room down the hall.
Cue a loud, obnoxious CLAP! right behind my ear.
Cue me not jumping.
"Don't do that," I said to the family, smirking. "I'll have to get you for that."
They all laughed as they made their way down the hall.
My eyes fell on the mass of towels against the door, sitting like a feeble dam against the room no one wanted to look into.
I started laughing hysterically.
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA DISCUSSION:
You know, I am always so amazed that Battlestar Galactica only has two more episodes in the entire series left, and we still have no answers. Who are the people inside everyone's heads that Baltar is calling 'angels'? How did Starbuck resurrect and not only her body, but in a brand new Viper plane? How did she have the dog tags she was wearing when she returned claiming to know her way to Earth, when the body she found charred and rotting on Earth's surface, clearly her own, displayed her dog tags as well? What is that song, that somehow turned the Final Five Cylons on to knowing what they were? The song that Hera, a three-year-old girl, somehow drew the sheet music of on her coloring book? How did Starbuck know that song? More importantly, how did her father know that song? And how is her father sitting there next to her in a bar, apparently invisible to everyone else except her, playing the song with her?
Why is Starbuck the Harbinger of Death?
Here's a clip that I found so enthralling, but I don't know if it's because of the music or because of the sudden realization in that scene. Starbuck begins to play the song alongside the person she begins to realize is, impossibly, the vision of her father, and the Final Five cylons begin to hear it...
Click to view
I just wonder what the next two episodes have for us. The Battlestar ship is dying, and the humans have finally conceded to leave it behind. Starbuck's husband, one of the Final Five, Sam, no longer exists as she knew him, but is now wired up into the ship like a Hybrid himself. Disgusted, not wanting him to be displayed like a forsaken exhibit, pulls out her gun to shoot him in the skull.
He grabs her arm and wrenches it, even though he still appears to be in a coma, and he begins to prophecize like the Hybrids do.
"You are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace. You will lead them all to their end."
But dammit, writers, you are going to lead me to MY end if you don't wrap all the confusion up. T_T